Windows 11 setup is boring? Not anymore, you can play a game while you wait

Windows 11's installation process - or any operating system, for that matter - is a pretty dull affair involving a lot of foot-tapping, but a new addition from Microsoft tries to make the initial OS setup a good deal more fun.

As The Verge reports, while setting up Windows 11 on a Surface Laptop Studio 2 and applying updates, Microsoft offered up the chance to play a game.

This is a surfing game that's a modern version of the SkiFree mini-game from way back when, challenging you to dodge obstacles as you whizz down a course (and avoid the marauding yeti - changed into a kraken for the surfing version). There are also other modes like slalom and time trial, too.

In actual fact, this game can be run from the Edge browser as an Easter egg Microsoft put in place a few years back (just type 'edge://surf' in the URL bar, and away you go).

Having this in place to while away time while waiting for updates to churn through is certainly a nifty idea, though it's not clear whether this just happens for new Surface hardware.

We can but hope that it's an option offered to anyone engaging in Windows setup, not just Surface owners. Or at least that it's in the pipeline to be available widely during setup, as we can't think why Microsoft wouldn't do this.

Interestingly, one of The Verge's readers posted to say that the surfing game was available when setting up a Lenovo laptop, so that's a bit of anecdotal evidence that this isn't just applicable to Microsoft's own laptops and hybrids.

Other Windows 11 news from earlier this week is a bit bleaker - we're talking about the introduction of ads to the desktop via the new Copilot AI.