Surface Pro or iPad Mini 2/iPad 5 is the question (for 2013).

So it's 2013 and this is a special year for me. I will definitely be purchasing my first tablet this year. After checking out the iPad Mini, I fell in love with the form factor (size and weight) and the performance of the little one. But I still prefer to get a Windows Tablet because media sharing - which is my primary goal - is easiest with a Windows 8 tablet (not a Windows RT tablet btw.)

CES 2013 is currently under way in USA, and people have got their hands on the Microsoft's Surface Pro - not for review purposes unfortunately. Contrary to the previous belief that the big brother would be a heavy, loud and large tablet, it seems it's not that much of a worry. As per this article The Verge posted on their website talking about the initial hands on experience on the Surface Pro which is supposed to come out somewhere around 26th of this month, there is some hope.

But it is not for one handed use. Tablets are not for one handed use anyways - that's for the phones, even though you can do that with an iPad Mini. My initial concern was about two handed use. And noise. Both of which don't seem to be big issues with the initial prototype. 

BTW, I have no use for a Pen. But the Surface Pro comes with one. I wish they gave the touch keyboard instead of the Pen. I probably can live with the 5 hours or so battery life of the Surface Pro. I don't expect to take it out of the house much. But if I went with the iPad Mini, I can do that without any issue. So that's a minus point for the Surface Pro nevertheless.

Oh I forgot one thing. The price and support would pay a big role as well. Right now, unfortunately, the iPad is in the lead to get into our household. Or else, I can make my wife a iSheep and myself a Microsoft Whore. hehehe (That means I will have to give up my iPhone and stop using a phone at all because Softbank doesn't sell any Windows Phones. Dammit!)

Whichever camp I go with, I would be happy with the new gadget. Ciao.

Passport renewal - fatal mistake by the Department of Immigration Sri Lanka

I was supposed to fly back to Japan on 6th of January, 2013. But there was a problem with my passport and I had to delay the trip by another week. 

This is what happened. 

My passport was supposed to expire in June 2013. Since I would be in Japan when it expires, I thought of getting a new passport when I came to Sri Lanka in December 2012. My Japanese VISA is in the old passport, but that is alright. As long as I traveled with both my old passport and the new one, I won't be having any problem. 

BTW, it would have cost me a lot of money in JPY if I got it done via the Sri Lankan Embassy in Japan. 

Note: 

Only recently (even after getting my new passport) I found out that you cannot leave the country with a passport that expires within the next 6 months! I didn't know that. Does everybody else knows this? I think we should be informed of this when we enter the country.

Anyways, I got my new passport and I checked whether there was any reference to the old passport in the new passport. Sure enough. In the amendments page, it said that my old passport number was Mxxxxxx and there was a stamp on the first page of the old passport saying that a new passport has been issued. I thought everything is OK and I just glanced through the new passport without thoroughly checking if everything else was in order. (My only concern was that the VISA was on the old passport and a way to prove that both passports are mine.) 

And THAT was my mistake. I didn't check for anything else. I didn't think anything could go wrong. After all, all my details were already in their system, right? How wrong I was!

Crysis 3 pre-order not available on Indian Origin?

Shame. Pre-ordering Crysis 3 was one of the goals of my Sri Lanka visit. When you access Electronic Art's Origin store, it connects to the Indian store. But the Indian store not only doesn't carry the Pre-order, but the title itself is not listed there. 

I can pre-order from Japan, but there are two problems with it. 

First one is that you can only get the Japanese version. You cannot get the international version from Origin - or so I believe. I haven't really bought anything on Origin from Japan, so I cannot say for sure, but that's what I could understand from the description.

The second one is that the price in the Japanese Origin store is way too high. They must be still thinking that we are in the last decade where the US$ was about JPY100, when in fact it has dropped quite a lot in the last couple of years. (Of course with the change of the government in December, that value of Japanese Yen has dropped a bit, but it will rise up in a few months.) For example, for a $79.95 title, they were asking about JPY7,995. Insane! 

If you can grab them from the Indian Origin Store, you can get it for like JPY2,000 or even less than that. That's how I got Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, both costing only INR 999 which translated to about JPY1,400. 

It's a shame that I could not get Crysis 3 in that manner.

I probably will have to ask my dad to buy it from me when the pre-order becomes available. Perhaps I should setup TeamViewer in the home PC so that I can do it on my own. But I don't know how 512k ADSL internet connection would like that. That's pretty much the only game that I am looking forward to playing in 2013. Surely there will be another Need for Speed title as they have been releasing new titles annually.