I don’t know that it is. BigscreenVR is not an Apple product, so your comment doesn’t feel particularly relevant.
They probably chose iPhones because they’re the most common device that has the capacity to get a 3D scan of someone’s face. They’re probably able to get semi-consistent results with this approach, whereas opening things up to the wide variety of IR devices in laptops and Android phones would increase the number of variables and make OP’s frustrating experience even more common.
If this is a hard / full system freeze, there will be nothing you can do because the system has fully locked up.
Test whether or not this is the case by pressing CapsLock and seeing if the status indicator light changes states.
Freezing like you describe is often a hardware issue, I recommend that you start by testing your RAM with Memtest86
A “power user” is typically going to go through the UEFI/BIOS settings immediately after assembling their machine to configure them to their liking.
Having that preference, you likely fall within that category.
I would add that, at this point, this practice is about 6 generations old at this point and in use by most motherboard vendors.
As the article mentions, the feature could be considered useful. These products aren’t designed specifically for power users. Having network access and a frictionless path to driver deployment is ultimately beneficial to the majority of consumers who are going to interact with this hardware.
I’m quite happy to install it, disable its startup background functions, and then use it to install / update drivers periodically. Much less tedious than doing it the manual way, especially when managing 10-20 systems per week.
There’s a bunch of other potential functions but I simply don’t bother with them.
It’s for the more novice users who can assemble a PC but don’t ever think go download / install drivers afterwards.
Most of the motherboard OEMs do this. I get a lot fewer tickets where the root cause of the issue can be boiled down to “never installed drivers afterwards installing Windows”, which is also helped by the fact that many drivers are also served through Windows Update.
I haven’t found that it comes back on its own after being uninstalled but I also deliberately have it on all my daily drivers, so it’s possible that’s happening with the annual feature updates.
In notification settings, there are two options that use the “welcome experience” and “tips / tricks” language - disabling those does away with a lot of the fullscreen subscription solicitations.
A lot of average users do benefit from being asked to opt in once or twice, but I agree there ought to be a more accessible “no thanks, never ask me again” option for power users.
I also wish that stuff was scaled back or stripped out of the professional editions of Windows, LTSC editions don’t have it but the license requirements don’t make that a particularly accessible option.
Linux is definitely the right move, it brings me great joy to see more and more folks discovering that as an option that is bot only viable, but also better. I hope to see Windows 10’s EOL become “the great Linuxing”
You’re free to use your documents folder as much as you want, it’s still local to your disk / filesystem.
Without available space in the cloud storage plan, those items won’t upload to the cloud and will have a red X as their status icon.
That happened because you unlinked OneDrive 6 months ago, or it deauthenticated and was never signed back in. Without being connected, it never got the memo that those files were removed so it never deleted those things from there.
The same thing would happen if you uninstalled any other program and then deleted the now local-only files, or if you restored from a 6 months old backup.
I primarily use it for my Windows PCs, I have it installed on my Macs. Rarely need anything in there from Linux, but it’s nice to be able to pop in from a browser and grab something.
I work in an IT Support role for a lot of users, and I think that OneDrive is the ideal backup for the average Windows user / basic consumer. It covers the folders that most people care about, offers versioning of files, and even ensures that I’m not needed when they transition to a new device even if their previous device does not turn on anymore.
In the US, Dropbox’s cost of entry is $120/$144 per year depending on whether or not you go month to month. The majority of users don’t need a 2TB storage plan.
OneDrive starts at $20/$24 for 100GB, $70/$84 for a 1TB plan, or $100/$120 for a 6-user family plan that totals 6TB.
Didn’t they use this in the LEGO LOTR game?