Logos hope visits Colombo Harbour and I need a tablet.

I ran out of Internet bandwidth for this month. SLT package I have at home gives my family the luxury of 25 GByte worth the Internet serf a month. Should we want to use after the bandwidth limit, we will have an Internet at a 64 KByte per second speed. So, got frustrated try to access my documents on Google Drive and switched off my computer to go see the "Logos hope" ship book fair.

Colombo Harbour

There is always a mystery I feel about oceans or sea. I love big ships and I'm fortunate enough to go in two of the fairly big ones so far in my life. This was truly nice evening for me to visit Colombo port area and the "Logos hope" ship when they are parked in Colombo to showcase and sell books from all over the world. There were roughly about five thousand books and they were fairly reasonable on price. All the book prices were in units. 100 units' equal to 240 Sri Lankan Rupees, by-the-way. Also, I learned that Estelle van Eeden, originally from South Africa but now based in Sri Lanka, finished her two year commitment on the ship last year and she was there for her debut picture book, Lost Things, aimed at four to eight year olds. Logos Hope crew members helped at the launch of the book by dressing up as clowns, painting faces and hands and hanging out with the local kids from Colombo. "The Logos Hope crew have helped make this day awesome for the kids of our community in Sri Lanka," commented Estelle.

Logos hope ship - Colombo Harbour

When I looked at these awesomely cool books with cool pictures and all awesome quality papers with the new-book-smell, I badly wanted to buy them, read them, keep them at home, look at them when I feel bored, sell them, buy more of them and want to write some of them best ones once I read enough books to write my own ones.

Colombo Harbour - Logos hope & Tiger Pearl 

So, let me start the real topic of this post. Tablets. If I really want to take my book-reading to next level, I need a tablet. I can't be buying books and taking with me everywhere to read. I feel having a nice tablet would really enhance my lifestyle as a book enthusiastic and wannabe writer. I always felt happy seeing people happily reading books/eBooks on their tablet at coffee shops, restaurants and parks etc.. There are things makes me happy I don't know why and now I just want a tablet. To be honest with you guys, I have two problems. One, I need to find the money to buy the tablet I want to buy. Second, I want to figure out what is the best one for me. There are about dozen good tablet makes and about a couple of good mobile operation systems the tablets use. Now about a few of years I want to buy a good tablet I could take with me everywhere and read, write and do my social networking. Ever since I watch the iPad mini promo video, I have this feeling that iPad could have been a better option. iPhone is awesome, it's just that I can't really do reading on my iPhone. I can't complain iPhone typing.

Colombo Harbour Area

Now, I'm looking to buy a tablet that I could,

1. Use flawlessly to reading things on the Internet.
2. Better touch sensitivity. Type without getting annoyed with the touch software-keyboard. Physical keyboard compatibility is a must.
3. Long battery life. I should be able to continually use it without charging at least for a day.
4. It has to be either android or iOS. Not that I think Ubuntu or blackberry or doesn't do a good job, it's just that I think using an operating system most of others use would be an good option to relate to and talk about. Also, I expect them to grow faster than other operating systems. Windows is not an option. I had a chance to try it and I hate the whole thing. If you ask me, Microsoft sill doesn't understand the basic elements of user friendliness.
5. use long time (Durability and build quality)
6. has a better display.(High-definition, anti-glare display)
7. use fast Internet (Wireless Internet connectivity and mobile broadband)
8. use GPS satellite location
9. take some normal shots or videos (I really don't care much about the camera.)
10. save a lot things (Data storage. not very important. Cloud storage options for backup and syncing data across devices)
11. have Accelerometer (Detects the physical movement and orientation of the tablet. This allows the touchscreen display to shift to either portrait or landscape mode. In addition, tilting the tablet may be used as an input [for instance to steer in a driving game])
12. have Ambient light and proximity sensors, which help distinguish between intentional and unintentional touches.
13. talk to the tablet (Speech recognition - Siri or Google Now)

You guys know how much of a good Google researcher I am, right? So, I used my super-power and did a bit of a research and found that toptenreviews.com published an excellent comparison and 10-9 ? Excellent, 8-6 ? Good,5-4 ? Average, 3-2 ? Poor & 1-0 ? Bad

	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10
	The new iPad	Microsoft Surface	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Nexus 7	Sony Xperia Tablet S	Asus Transformer Pad Infinity	Kindle Fire HD	Motorola Xoom	BlackBerry Playbook	HP Slate 2
	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Ratings	10.00	9.93	9.68	9.65	9.50	9.20	9.20	8.68	7.90	7.90
Features
Operating System	iOS 5	Microsoft RT	Android 4.0	Android 4.1	Android 4.0	Android 4.0	Android 4.0	Android 3.1	BlackBerry	Windows 7
Rear Camera	5.0MP	1.2MP	3.0MP	N/A	8.0MP	8.0MP	N/A	5.0MP	5.0MP	3.0MP
Front Camera	0.3MP	1.2MP	0.3MP	1.2MP	1.0MP	2.0MP	1.3MP	2.0MP	3.0MP	0.3MP
Communication	Wi-Fi, 4G	Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi
Battery Life (hours)	10	8	10	10	12	9.5	11	10	10	7.5
Warranty (years)	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Music Player	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Accelerometer	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Video Chat	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
GPS	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Built-in eReader	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
HD Video Recording	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔		✔	✔	✔
Hardware
Processor Speed	1GHz	1.3GHz	1GHz	1.3GHz	1.4GHz	1.6GHz	1.2GHz	1GHz	1GHz	1.5 GHz
Processor Cores	Dual-Core A5X	Quad Core Tegra 3	Dual-Core Cortex-A9	Quad-Core Tegra 3	NVIDIA Tegra 3.0	NVIDIA Tegra 3 4-Plus-1	Dual-Core Cortex-A9	Dual-Core Cortex-A9	Dual-Core Cortex-A9	Intel Atom Z670
Memory	16/32/64GB	32/64	16/32GB + Up to 32GB	8/16	16GB + Up to 64GB	32/64GB	16/32GB	32GB	16/32/64GB	64GB
Built-in Speakers	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Built-in Microphone	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
3.5 mm Headphone Jack	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
USB		✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Display
Screen Type	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen	Touchscreen
Screen Size (inches)	9.7	10.6	10.1	7	9.4	10.1	7	10.1	7	8.9
Screen Resolution	2048 x 1536	1366 x 768	1280 x 800	1280 x 800	1280 x 800	1920 x 1200	1280 x 800	1280 x 800	1024 x 600	1024 x 600
Height (inches)	9.5	10.81	6.9	7.8	9.5	10.35	7.6	9.8	7.6	9.2
Width (inches)	7.3	6.77	10.1	4.7	6.9	7.12	5.4	6.6	5.1	5.9
Depth (inches)	0.4	0.37	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.33	0.4	0.5	0.4	0.6
Weight (pounds)	1.46	1.5	1.28	0.75	1.26	1.3	0.87	1.6	0.9	1.5

iPad mini

The above table gives us a big clear picture of the feature and user ratings, however, the current superstar iPad mini is not in the comparison and that's my favourite by far. I watched the promo video on YouTube and I feel that this would be 1) very light weight 2) could use a day or two without recharging 3) should fit perfectly fine in my palm 4) could attach a Bluetooth enabled physical keyboard. 5) don't have to talk about the build quality, it's apple:) 6) It has the same screen resolution as the bigger one 7) I could sync the apps and data with my iPhone. Yet, I want to wait for a 64 bit iPad mini. Now that we have 64 bit iPhone with fingerprint scanner, my guess is that we would see a much advanced iPad mini in the near future and I badly want to wait for it. Also, obviously, use the time to save some money for it.

I hope you find this useful or interesting and could think about buying your own tablet. It would be wise for you to list down all the things you want to do with a tablet and compare the features against your budget before you buy. This post might have been a bit boring, if you're not planing on buying a tablet, but hey!, information is wealth:)

It’s a never ending quest

Today, now, as any other weekend evenings; I’m ly-ing partially arching my back on the warm sand in the beach comfortably. My mind feels clean, must be this gentle breeze coming from sea towards the beach and the moon light. It’s around 7.30 PM now. No sun, but moon is on night shift. Beach side lights complaining moon’s job. Unusually few people for Sunday.

I don’t remember thinking anything when come and sit here, but then as I start to look around, the people walk, talk, lights, dogs, coconut trees, bars, restaurants and hotels; looking at these, little-little ideas/thoughts/judgments/comments start to pop inside my brain. Tomorrow is full moon day, so today; moon’s bright and beautiful lighting up the whole beach and the sea. The people are truly blessed to be here and experience this.

Mostly these chains of thoughts make me paranoid and leave me with a million questions. Why am I here? What am I doing? Who these people are?  What are they doing here? Why some are happy and some are not? Why some are rich and others are not? Why some drink a lot, shout and laugh to a point they bother others? The questions list is usually very big that I get frustrated not being able to answer any and feeling petite.  Most people seem to be comfortable agreeing with whatever the religion they follow to answer these questions somewhat irrationally and blindly. I have a need to make sense when I tell myself something. If I tell myself that I’m here because god created me, I know I will really get angry at myself easily. So, I can’t try to answer myself any of these questions relying solely on religion.

Some of the questions popped in my head are in and around the area where I’m comfortable answering.

1. What programming language should I choose to excel on and why?
2. How to keep me up-to-date with the current technologies?
3. iOS or Android and would I need a tablet?
4. Where I want to settle down?
5. What are the things I badly want to change in my personal life?
6. How I want to change the world?

Most of the time when I think about these things, I add a note to my “any.DO” app in my iOS, which is awesome BTW, and remind myself everyday to make them a routine or to complete them or make a decision on. Since I don’t have anything nice to write in my blog, I’m thinking of picking some of the things I noted in my “any.DO” relating to the some of the questions I have been asking myself and answer them in future posts. I’m typing this on my iPhone blogger app as I’m listening to some quality Jazz. It’s not something I find easy to do. I’m still struggling to acclimatize to mobile-computing; I’m still more comfortable typing on a computer.

So, I’m going to switch to Microsoft OneNote and note down the things I want to write when I post separate blog entries answering the above questions. Talking about OneNote, if you’re using any iOS devices, please try Microsoft Office OneNote. …….. ahhhhh… Also,  It’s a bit dark here and my camera doesn’t do a good job in low light conditions yet I shot some ok pictures to post along with this blog entry to give you guys a sagacity of what I’m talking about.

I would really appreciate guys, if you could email or comment your answers to the questions I talked about. I badly want to get interactive with the bloggers community and learn art of writing, but so far I couldn’t find an easy way to do that.

I’m doing so many things thinking one day or another these things are going to make sense. Hope I’m right and thank you, if you want to say to me “Hey! Who knows what’s going on? Do what you feel like doing.” Life seems to be a never ending pursuit of answers to so many questions we have and as we experience new many things every day we get the answers and forget the questions.