Guess I would stick with Apple after all

In the last couple of weeks, we were having trouble with my wife’s iPhone 4S’s earpiece. We did everything we could from out end, but it didn’t heal. It didn’t heal by itself either. So finally we decided to get the Genius Bar involved.

I called the Apple Support center and they came to the conclusion that they may have to replace the handset. There were two options. I could either tell them to pick the phone up free of charge (pretty cool, ha?) or I could head to an Apple Store. If they picked it up, it would take up to a week to get things resolved. I could not take that option. My wife has to go to work. There are a million things that can go wrong in an event of a big incident. So she had to have her phone with her at all times she was out of the house.

So it was decided that we went to an Apple Store. There were two Apple Stores close to our apartment. One in Shibuya and one in Ginza. Both were within an hour of travel time. Shibuya was closer and in addition to that, we were planning to attend the Sri Lankan Festival 2012 which was only a walking distance from the Shibuya station. So without further ado, we decided to pay a visit to the Apple Store in Shibuya.

Why can’t Movie Maker upload to YouTube in the background?

I wanted to upload few videos to YouTube which I edited in Movie Maker and happened to come across two incapabilities. Don’t developers at Microsoft ever come across there?

The incapabilities

YouTube would not remember your username and password once you re-launch the app. Why the heck is that? How hard is it for them to save the username and password? Why can’t it be bundled with your Windows Live ID like everywhere else?

Pros and Cons of a Single-GPU system over a Multi-GPU system

Most people are in the opinion that you can get two low-end or midrange GPUs, set them up in SLI or Crossfire depending on the GPU maker, and get similar or more performance than a high-end single GPU. They would usually get that idea from the reviews. But most reviews would only talk about the FPS that is reported to them and conclude that the multi GPU setup gives more to the consumer, but they forget to mention a lot of things in the process.

But in reality, you should not build a multi-GPU setup if it is utmost necessary. Let’s first see why you should not build a multi-GPU setup.

Pros of Single-GPU setup over Multi-GPU setup

1. Smoother gameplay even at a lower reported FPS value

That is insane, right? How can lower FPS be smoother than higher FPS? That is because the phenomenon called micro-stuttering. You would get very annoying, small pauses that are noticeable to eye, but not to the FPS monitoring apps such as FRAPS which record the frame count in a second. The frames are spread equally inside that second. Say 30fps. You might get 20 frames in the first half second and 10 frames in the second half second. This difference is noticeable to the eye and it is very difficult to the eye. Basically, how much noticeable it is, depends on the person, the game and even the other components of the PC. There is no clear cut answer to this problem from either GPU maker.