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64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free

• jug6ernaut 14y ago
  I want so badly to like MS. But stuff like this is making this goal almost impossible.
  • DavidBradbury 14y ago
    I know! How dare an OS and its applications take up space on the hard drive! This is certainly unprecedented and has never happened in the history of PC's and laptops.
    • jug6ernaut 14y ago
      Thank you for your intelligent post. Hey look now we are both being sarcastic. Selling a device advertised as 64GB of storage with only 20GB~ free IS a problem. Its horribly misleading.
      • DavidBradbury 14y ago
        There is nothing misleading about it. There is 64GB of storage, and if you want to use more of the available space, remove some of the software it comes with. If you wish for intelligent discussion, how about we discuss a more interesting topic. How much free space should be expected? Should a non-techy device such as the Surface sacrifice space in order to make their user experience better? Where do you draw the line?
        • jug6ernaut 14y ago
          One should expect how ever much is advertised. In this case 64GB's of storage is advertised implying there is 64GB's of storage accessible to the user. Of course we have NEVER had the full space advertised by storage devices accessible for a multitude of reasons. We mainly go along with this because its advertising. But thats my point here, the advertising is getting out of hand, when you get a device and you have less then 1/2 of the advertised space that SHOULD be a problem. On a side note the Surface and much less Surface PRO are no longer "techy" devices? I don't necessarily agree with that, but that and your statement are both opinions.
          • baddox 14y ago
            > One should expect how ever much is advertised. No, one shouldn't, because that hasn't been true of any comparable electronic device or computer in the last 5 years. You confirm this in your next paragraph, so I don't understand why you included the first paragraph. It's not "just advertising." There truly is a 64GB chip in the device.
        • nemothekid 14y ago
          Alright its not misleading, but it is strange. I know someone will call me out for comparing the iPad and Surface Pro, but if both devices are priced as "64 GB tablets" when you turn on your iPad you get ~55GB. The surface pro reportedly has only 23GB available. That's less than half. Look at it the way, you can buy a 32 GB iPad, magically get a Mountain Lion install on there, and be left with just about the same amount of free space. Imagine they were selling water bottles. Apple/Android's waterball was 8" tall and has a shape such that 6% of the shape of cylindrical shape doesn't actually hold water. MS sells you the same thing however the water bottle is half the size, for the same price. Most people will just shrug off the 6% as a "Fact of life", but over 50% and that's just wrong. As another user commented, an imaginary fuzzy line between "fair" and ripped off has just been crossed.
        • talmir 14y ago
          Yeah, remove the software... Your choice is to remove the OS or the recovery partition. Awesome choices right there.
      • baddox 14y ago
        It's no more misleading than advertising 64GB of storage with only 63.5GB free.
    • TsiCClawOfLight 14y ago
      You forget that most Linux distros take up much less space than windows.
      • DavidBradbury 14y ago
        You forget we are talking about the Microsoft Surface tablet - A non-techy device with a target demographic of completely different users with different needs. Apples and oranges.
    • CamperBob2 14y ago
      (Shrug) Other people are doing a better job. Microsoft hasn't had to compete in the OS space for a long time; now they do.
• monkeyfacebag 14y ago
  Regarding FTC action, it's worth noting that MS's page on the Surface Pro (http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-8-pro/home http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-...) includes this small print: System software uses significant storage space; your storage capacity will be less. I freely admit ignorance of the law but to a layman it seems like they've covered themselves pretty well here. I would be curious to know what impact this would have on potential FTC action. Further, I wonder how easily the "recovery partition" can be disabled and how much space a user could recover. How much is OS and how much is "recovery partition"?
  • uptown 14y ago
    It's baffling to me why they wouldn't just make the "recovery" partition a download or put it on a USB drive to begin with.
    • dangrossman 14y ago
      It's already a costly device, and a large USB drive in every box would've added even more. You can make your own bootable USB drive and delete the recovery partition if you want that space back, as the article said.
      • Inufu 14y ago
        USB drives are 0.5€ per GB, if we are very generous and add a 16GB stick for recovery, that's still only 8€. Even less if you account for bulk discounts. That's hardly a big cost factor, compared to the total price of the tablet.
      • ars 14y ago
        Wait, so you are saying that microsoft would rather waste the costly device inside the tablet? If not for the recovery area they could use a smaller drive after all. It's better to spend the money on a cheap external device instead of an expensive internal one.
    • bitwize 14y ago
• antidaily 14y ago
  Luckily there are only 20 GB worth of apps in the Windows Store.
  • wmf 14y ago
    Some people also store data on their tablets. Like videos.
• jinushaun 14y ago
  Anyone running Windows instances on EC2 will tell you that a 30 GB EBS partition only gives you around 10 GB of usable space. Windows takes up a lot of space (15 GB for 32-bit and 20 GB for 64-bit) even before apps get involved. I remember when the original iPhone debuted, I was completely SHOCKED that Apple was able to reduce the footprint of OS X so dramatically. A 8 GB phone still gave you 6.5 GB of free space. Then with the release of Snow Leopard, Apple more than halved the size of the space required to install OS X.
  • nightski 14y ago
    It is not that Microsoft can't shrink the size of Windows. In fact that is exactly what they did with Windows RT. The problem is on the Surface Pro product they are including compatibility with full Win32 and have to supply all the extra cruft that entails. So people want to run all the native apps like Photoshop, but then complain when it takes too much space :P
    • MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      Windows RT supports Win32, you just can't execute any non-whitelisted binary. Windows RT has Notepad, Calculator, Explorer. All Win32 apps.
      • TsiCClawOfLight 14y ago
        AFAIK WinRT isn't windows. It's a Metro-Style ARM OS with Windows Branding.
        • kyberias 14y ago
          Well, how do you define "Windows"? Windows RT (not WinRT!) is ARM based Windows that can only run "Metro-Style" apps. With the exception of Office that comes preinstalled on Surface RT. It still has some familiar features like the desktop, command prompt, Explorer, like normal Windows OS but you can't install any desktop software.
• Jare 14y ago
  Reminds me of the common shock when an european travels to North America and finds out that restaurant listed prices do not include taxes nor (massive in comparison) tips. It's all storage and it's a valid measure, especially if you consider that perhaps some stuff can be uninstalled to make more room. In practice, whoever cares about the exact amount of free space will find out, and whoever doesn't will just use the numbers to label same-kind devices as 'bigger' and 'smaller'. Comparing numbers from different types of devices is as meaningful as comparing version numbers from competing software products.
  • epmatsw 14y ago
    But the average consumer doesn't think like that. They see a 64gb iPad and a 64gb Surface. To most people, that's like a 3 meter rope and a 3 meter cable. They're the same measurements, and they "should" be the same.
    • Jare 14y ago
      If the average consumer does not understand the difference between an iPad and a Surface Pro, then the misguided GB comparison is the least of their problems.
    • nwh 14y ago
      Three meters long when it was cut. Two meters of it were used to attach the plug.
• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I tend to find these sorts of arguments silly. They are silly because the tech industry trains people about the specsmanship game early on, generally people learn the game after buying one, or at most two technology products. The game is simple, there will be associated with a device a numerically significant value. It may be the "version" number, the "memory" number, the "speed" number, the "users" number, but its a number. And two or more apparently identical devices will obey the rule that the bigger numbers are the "better" devices and the smaller numbers are the "less good" devices. There are two rules that seem to be true in this game; 1) The numbers for the same manufacture will determine which is the better version of the product. 2) When competitors use the same "sort" of numbers, the numbers will be set up to have you compare the products that the competitors want you compare, not necessarily equivalent products. When Tegra 3 tablets came out and "number of cores" became a thing, Apple started counting everything they could as a core. With storage people use the biggest number they can, with 100GB disk drives really having 95 x 2^20 bytes of storage in them. But hey, 100 sounds better than 95 and 'G' means a billion right? Right! In the case of storage the 'base' foot print is fixed, so its 64% of a 64G drive, and 35% of a 128GB drive, and 17% of a 256G drive etc etc etc. Sure its amazing how 'fat' the base OS is on a Surface pro, but since a 256GB SSD today costs the same as an 8GB SSD cost when Windows XP was in vogue (and fits in a smaller footprint if you use mSATA what does it matter? If it is extremely bad then it means there is room for disruption, a lightweight OS that does all of that and gives you more of the storage. But call out the feds? (the FTC call for action in Marco's post) really?
  • danilocampos 14y ago
    I read your comment here with ever-growing puzzlement. The storage spec matters. It's the only spec that truly makes a day-to-day difference in the lives of most users, since it provides an upper bound on the portability of their data. The less storage you have, the fewer varieties of "complete" libraries of your content you can carry around. Less storage means making tradeoffs like not having your whole music library when you travel, since you really need space for movies on the plane ride. Not having all your photos, because you need room for some games you feel like playing. Storage space matters every single day. Getting short-changed on it kinda sucks.
• Toshio 14y ago
  Says microsoft in their announcement: > "Surface Pro has a USB 3.0 port for connectivity with almost limitless storage options, including external hard drives and USB flash drives" Translation: "For the sake of portability ..." > "Customers can also free up additional storage space by creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition" Translation: "... and for the sake of simplicity ..." > "Surface also comes pre-loaded with SkyDrive, allowing you to store up to 7GB of content in the cloud for free" Translation: "... and because we've always poo-pooed Google when it came to the usefulness of their Chromebooks without an Internet connection ..." "... we are proud to present to you ... surface pro!!!"
• bane 14y ago
  In other news, water is wet, operating systems take up lots of disk space, and the sun is hot.
• eumenides1 14y ago
  Why don't they just sell it as 20 gigs? By promising 64 gb, they are just asking for trouble. Nobody is going to buy it (the lie and product). It's that or lower the foot print of the OS.
  • rosser 14y ago
    Because if they sold it as a 20 gbyte unit, but priced it as a 64 gbyte unit, they'd get called out for that instead. Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
    • nextparadigms 14y ago
      It's not the user's problem that the OS takes up that much space. The user is already paying for the license. He shouldn't have to pay twice (that 40 GB of SSD space is pretty expensive).
      • bcoates 14y ago
        This is the second place in this thread you've said this, I don't understand what you could possibly mean. Do you think Microsoft could somehow throw the space in "for free"? How could you even tell?
    • revscat 14y ago
      Then Microsoft needs to make an OS that isn't so bulky, tailored for tablets. Apple was able to do it. There's no reason Microsoft can't.
      • fudged71 14y ago
        Compatibility is a huge reason why so many people still use windows. Compatibility with older applications and formats. That's what takes up so much space.
    • 89a 14y ago
      or they could just ship a product with a sensibly sized OS…
• absconditus 14y ago
  For comparison, I have a 64 GB iPad (most recent generation) with a few gigabytes of apps and content right now. I have 53.8 GB available.
  • edtechdev 14y ago
    For comparison, Windows uses up about 20 gigs, as does OS X on a Macbook Air with SSD drive. The difference is windows also has a) recovery partition b) hibernate file c) the typical crapware that comes with every windows computer This has got to be one of Marco's finest trolls so far this year
    • gannonburgett 14y ago
      Actually, including the OS and the pre-installed apps, OSX on a MBA with a SSD takes up just under 10GB. Also: "The difference is windows also has a) recovery partition b) hibernate file c) the typical crapware that comes with every windows computer" You just proved why it's a disaster out of the gate. "Typical crapware" especially. The entire comment section is one of the finest trolls so far this year.
• gfodor 14y ago
  Posters here comparing it to traditional "space inflation" on drives are missing the point. The difference here is the magnitude. On the box you are told you have 64GB and you end up having only a third of that to use. There's a fuzzy line somewhere and it really feels like this is on the wrong side of it. Also, if you look at it in terms of dollars and cents, Apple prices their iPads more or less based upon storage so you're looking at a situation where consumers are legitimately making different decisions due to this problem. In other words, a 32GB iPad and a 64GB surface pro are comparable in capabilities whereas a 64gb iPad provides much more storage than the surface. The investment Apple made in reducing the footprint of the OS is basically not being taken into account in pricing.
  • seivan 14y ago
    "The investment Apple made in reducing the footprint of the OS is basically not being taken into account in pricing." Bingo! - Quality in both Software and Hardware.
  • cooldeal 14y ago
    >On the box you are told you have 64GB And, inside the box, lo behold, is a 64GB hard disk. Edit: The Nexus 4 8GB only has 5GB of free storage and has no means of extending the storage though a MicroSD or anything else.
    • munificent 14y ago
      When you buy a pickup truck, they tell you how much load it can haul in addition to the weight of the truck itself. They don't say, "Sorry, by 'three-ton capacity' we really meant 'one-ton' because the truck weighs two."
      • ChuckMcM 14y ago
        But they also tell you it has a 350HP motor and don't say how much of that energy is needed to run the power steering, the AC, and just push through the inefficiencies of the transmission system. They will tell you its towing capacity but they won't say that the capacity includes gross vehicle weight, so if you put a quarter ton of supplies in the truck bed you have to remove a quarter ton from the 'towing capacity.' There are numbers and there are numbers right?
• gambiting 14y ago
  But the Surface Pro DOES have 64GB of memory,right? If it does,then your argument is invalid. It might need to ue 41GB for the system,but the name is absolutely correct.
  • nextparadigms 14y ago
    It's misleading.
• ww520 14y ago
  I wonder how much space is taken up by the pagefile. In modern computer with lots of memory, the pagefile can get pretty big.
• bcoates 14y ago
  Ignoring the dumb FTC idea, the 64GB Surface Pro does seem like an oddly pointless device. I can't imagine people shelling out for this relatively expensive PC would find it a good deal to save 10% off the price to have a cripplingly limited storage budget, or to use up the SDXC slot on a drive almost as expensive as the price differential. For MS, I can't imagine it'll be worth the bad PR to be able to advertise a $899 starting price instead of $999.
• blisterpeanuts 14y ago
  So... when someone ports Linux to the Surface Pro, there will probably be 60 gigs free! Then maybe I'd buy one (used, refurbished).
• martin-adams 14y ago
  While I get that Windows + pre-installed apps + recovery partition takes up space. When I saw that only 23GB is left after a 64GB capacity, I was shocked. Compare this to iOS or Android and you'll find it's going against my expectation. I doubt I'm alone. 23GB is not a lot of space these days if you plan to use it for something serious.
  • cooldeal 14y ago
    Why would you compare Windows 8 Pro with Android or iOS and not OS X or even Ubuntu?
    • wmf 14y ago
      Because it's a tablet. A "no compromise" tablet.
      • scholia 14y ago
        A "no compromise" tablet that also includes a full PC. Basically, a MacBook Air and an iPad in one device.
        • rayiner 14y ago
          Except without the all crucial real trackpad and keyboard.
          • scholia 14y ago
            It's assumed you'll get the Type Cover, which has a very usable real keyboard and a real touchpad. Plus, you also have a real touch screen as well. Yes, quite expensive by Windows PC standards, but a terrific package. You should try one for three months or so.
            • rayiner 14y ago
              It didn't take me three months to realize that the touch cover made for a shitty keyboard, the touchpad was microscopic, and the kickstand made the whole thing unusable for a lot of "precariously perched" use cases (seated on the couch, seated on the train or subway). If it's a good computer, you'll like it immediately in the store. If it takes three months to get used to the weird form factor, Microsoft will never sell any of them.
• smackfu 14y ago
  The odd thing is that Windows 8 minimum disk requirements are only 20 GB. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/system-requirements http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/system-requirem... (It's also interesting to see Marco try to nuance this post. All the Mac pundits have been posting it as a "haha, stupid Microsoft" which is probably why it came to his attention, but he tried to write his blog post in a generic way, that this is a problem with all of these devices.)
  • masklinn 14y ago
    Surface Pro is Win8 + pre-installed tools (e.g. Office Suite) + the recovery partition. The last 2 likely aren't included in the official w8 disk requirements.
    • smackfu 14y ago
      That's what I thought (and it's a pretty good counter-argument to the space issue if space is being used by free desirable software) but the small print on the Surface with Windows 8 Pro page says "Word 2013 and Office 2013 are sold separately."
  • npsimons 14y ago
    The odd thing is that Windows 8 minimum disk requirements are only 20 GB (spitting coffee across room) Only 20GB!? I can get a full Linux install, including desktop, development environment, graphics editors, office suites, etc, etc, etc for less space than that! It's sad that people have come to accept "only 20GB" as "not that bad". This reeks to me of the issues MS had trying to shoehorn windows on to netbooks, and just not getting it.
    • smackfu 14y ago
      The only reason this is even a story is because of Flash drives with lower capacities. On the desktop, I literally don't care about the tiny fraction of my 3 TB drive the OS is taking up.
      • 14y ago
• cooldeal 14y ago
  It's being advertised as coming with 64GB of storage, not with "64GB free". That's a huge difference. You can wipe the hard disk, install Damn Small Linux, and get ~64GB of free storage. The FTC should consider taking action? What? Why does Marco seem to lose all sense of perspective when it's Apple vs. competition?
  • fragsworth 14y ago
    It's still a bit disingenuous. Most people (and Microsoft surely knows this) think "available" even though it is advertised as "storage".
  • grecy 14y ago
    Consider these similar topics: A "5 seater" car, where some critical part of the car occupies 3 seats so you only have 2 for people. A box of 100 staples, where 64 are used to hold the box together, so you only get to use 36 A 50 inch plasma TV, where the bezel accounted for 32 inches of that. A car advertised as getting 30MPG, but when you put seats, seat belts, a heater, air conditioning and a radio in there it only gets 20 MPG It feels a lot like getting ripped off to me. Obviously we're power users, so we're willing to dive into this and understand that when you buy a 64GB device, you don't get that much storage. Do you think the general public understands that?
    • smackfu 14y ago
      Those are all pretty terrible analogies.
      • jlgreco 14y ago
        Are they? The difference is the difference between "technically correct" and "correct in a way that is relevant to the consumer".
      • laumars 14y ago
        I think the TV bezel example is spot on. But the problem with analogies is if you are of the opposing point of view, then you look for differences rather than similarities, so no analogy would work.
• hussong 14y ago
  It might be possible to make a fully functional tablet with 4 GB worth of software, not 40 GB. What in the world do they put on that thing?
  • Blara 14y ago
    A full version of Windows 8 Pro and backup partition of the same (which, from what I understand, you can put on an external drive and have an extra ~20GB)
• baddox 14y ago
  Does Microsoft disclose the usable space on their devices before purchase? If so, then I really don't see the problem. The device has a 64GB flash chip, and that's what the advertising says. All devices use some portion of their advertised space out of the box, so if you want to draw an arbitrary line and save customers 15 seconds of research before buying their expensive electronic device, I guess that's your prerogative.
• ajg1977 14y ago
  When I installed Windows 8 a few weeks ago, the 64-bit install was about 20GB so where the hell is the other 21GB going? Is the recovery partition literally a mirror image of the default install? That sounds ridiculous because the thing is basically a computer so could have a USB-restore, but I don't see how they get to 40GB+ otherwise. <facetious>21GB of trials and time-limited software? </facetious>
  • cma 14y ago
    Seems like they could have something like a (but a little more nuanced than) union-FS for the primary partition joining it with the recovery partition. Only updated files would need to take space on the primary partition, untouched files would be sourced from the recovery partition. To restore you just wipe the primary. Of course, there is an entire blog written about how sensible ideas like that are completely impossible: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/
  • dangrossman 14y ago
    Plausible: 20GB for Windows, 10GB for recovery, 4GB for the hibernation file (has to match RAM size), leaving 6GB for the swap file, system restore points and preinstalled software.
• denzil_correa 14y ago
  The best line of the article If those numbers don’t sound as good, or the manufacturers don’t leave themselves any room for OS- update expansion without changing the names of their products mid-cycle, that’s their problem to solve, not ours. The argument my Marco is simple really - walk the talk.
• ebbv 14y ago
  Anyone defending this is being disingenuous. Having ~66% of the storage already used out of the box is nuts and most people would be rightly annoyed and frustrated to find this out after buying one. The correct thing for Microsoft to have done in this situation is NOT release a 64GB model, if they were unable to free up more space.
  • rescripting 14y ago
    Thank you. There is a strong HN bias in this discussion, as a lot of people are throwing their arms up and saying "of course! Software takes up memory!" For me it's about average customer experience. An average customer with 50GB of music would likely purchase 64GB Surface without hesitation. Coming home and discovering it only fits half their collection crosses a (fuzzy) but very real line from acceptable loss to false advertising. They've made a large sacrifice they didn't know they were making when they purchased it. If this actually was considered false advertising and manufacturers had to advertise usable space instead of HD space, wouldn't that encourage competition? Who cares if the numbers are ugly, I'd be able to evaluate storage as a metric for purchase much more honestly. If something has a 64GB hard drive and only 23GB are available, the number 64 means literally nothing to the average consumer.
    • calciphus 14y ago
      It is a computer. It's sold as a computer. It runs REAL. WINDOWS. It is not an iPad. When I buy a computer, the OS takes up some of the space, despite what size the storage lists. MS disclosed this BEFORE anyone purchased the system. Where's the complaint?
      • skriticos2 14y ago
        Maybe I'd buy it if Windows would be the only thing around.. But I'm comparing it to my system (Ubuntu). The kernel takes about 70 MB and the entire system (including LibreOffice, Firefox and a basic apps) fits on a CD (including live environment). That's about 700 MB. With a full set of development tools and a good selection of applications I come to around 4 GB. That's a number I can comprehend. Now Windows 7/8 comes into arena somewhere around 16-17 GB on a clean install. This includes the base system, a shell, some tiny utility apps and a Browser. End of list. WTF?
• coloneltcb 14y ago
  The point about how you market size is the least interesting part of this. My question is why the the hell is Microsoft shipping such a pig of a mobile OS?
  • scholia 14y ago
    It's not a pig of a mobile OS, it's a full copy of Windows 8. You know, that's like Mac OS X <feline animal>. And it doesn't fit on a ROM chip.
    • BlackAura 14y ago
      Mac OS 10.8 takes up something like 13GB in total, including swap space. The recovery partition on a new Mac is tiny, containing just enough to download the install image over WiFi. Granted, not entirely comparable - 10.8 doesn't contain nearly as much legacy cruft as Windows does, but that's still a far cry from the 40GB taken up by Windows on the Surface Pro. A 64GB Macbook Air would have something like 45GB useable. Windows also tends to grow over time in ways that Mac OS doesn't, because Windows was built around the idea that you have ample hard drive space available. So you have restore points, backups of replaced system files from updates, caching of installed update packages and MSI packages, multiple versions of nearly every system library just in case some application really really needs one specific version... They all provide useful functionality, but were designed around having huge hard drives, where Windows taking up 50GB wouldn't be a big deal. Same thing with the separate swap and hibernate files - potentially more reliable but still chews through disk space that you might not be able to spare on a small SSD.
      • scholia 14y ago
        As I said, it's not a pig of a mobile OS, it's a full copy of Windows 8. You know, that's like Mac OS X <feline animal>. And it doesn't fit on a ROM chip.
  • ja27 14y ago
    That's my question too. Maybe I'm just old, but 40 gigs is what, about 8 DVD-length movies or 400 hours of MP3 music? All that to display text and colored squares on the screen? I mean, I appreciate that there is a lot to the different runtimes, especially .NET, side-by-side DLLs, etc., but just a few years ago the entire OS came on a 700 meg CD. What's really scary is how fast I've seen my Windows installs bloat with service packs, side-by-side assemblies/DLLs, etc. It wouldn't take much for the entire 64 gigabytes to be swallowed by C:\Windows alone.
• rmrfrmrf 14y ago
  Wow. Anyone who actively refuses to buy an Apple or Android tablet in favor of one of these overpriced monstrosities is 100% cutting off their nose to spite their face. I just can't even begin to fathom why Microsoft would go out of their way to cater to such an infinitesimal group of people who feel that a laptop is not portable enough, yet need the full functionality of god-knows-what program that probably doesn't even work properly with Windows 8.
  • edtechdev 14y ago
    Well we know there are hundreds of millions of people who think a laptop is not portable enough anymore - look at all the ipad and android tablet sales. They just want something that's as portable as an ipad, but can run windows software like Office, Photoshop, etc. These windows tablets also mostly have active Wacom digitizer screens for real stylus support, and include Microsoft OneNote, which is a full-featured note taking program that is nice for students. This has been the kicker, we want the tablet form factor, but we want to use productivity tools (which mostly depend on having a mouse, keyboard, and/or stylus). Unfortunately, the windows tablets are overpriced, and lower cost Windows RT tablets can't run standard Windows software, and the more powerful tablets like Surface Pro with an i5/i7 processor need a noisy and hot fan, AND the design of Windows 8 is confusing to virtually everyone who is familiar with Windows 7 or older. My ideal would be a tablet with detachable keyboard like an Asus Transformer but that can run Ubuntu (actually, you can install Ubuntu on an Asus Transformer, but it is too slow). The Asus Vivotab TF810C has the clovertrail processor which apparently isn't going to support linux, and the Asus Transformer Book is a heavier beast with a fan due to the i7 processor.
• smackfu 14y ago
  The difference between Microsoft and Apple: Apple would never have had the 64 GB one, because of this issue. They would just have the bigger drive, and charge more money for it.
  • MBCook 14y ago
    If you sell a version of your product that is going to leave a bad taste in the mouth of a large percentage of your users... is it worth selling? Do you remember when digital cameras were first starting to use flash memory? You could buy models that didn't have card slots but only included a few MB of flash. Nothing says quality like a new expensive digital camera that can only take less than 20 pictures. I bet a lot of people were unhappy about that. Apple tends to be very opinionated, but they usually don't release near crippled products. They're willing to forgo the low-end sales to ensure a better experience. This is just an odd decision. Why not ship with 96 GB and put some of that (say the 20GB system restore partition and the hibernate file) on a 32 GB partition that isn't shown to the user. This seems like a very poor choice on Microsoft's part. Some consumers won't care, some consumers will get feel ripped off, no consumers seem better off.
• zyb09 14y ago
  Wow, Microsoft definitely deserves some kind of award for this. Shipping a tablet, with own hardware design no less, with a 41GB OS is certainly an achievement not every company can accomplish. (sorry I'm just baffled how you can fill up 41GB)
  • scholia 14y ago
    It has a 20GB restore partition....
    • talmir 14y ago
      That is insane. I cant help but think that a better option would have been to offer a "recovery usb stick" for extra 50 bucks which would contain the recovery data and save the extra space for the user to make the device more attractive to the buyer.
      • scholia 14y ago
        It's not insane, it's a rational marketing decision. Users buy on the headline price, and price plus $50 would be much less attractive. People who want to move the recovery partition to their own choice of "recovery usb stick" can do so.
• trotsky 14y ago
  So basically marco assumes a standard that punishes bundling? A windows 8 tablet that comes bundled with a full office suite needs to advertise itself as 5-10GB smaller than the identically configured but less functional tablet without the bundle? Using 66% of shipped free space on a 64GB tablet is clearly wrong, but you can say that without coming up with some synthetic standard that nobody will ever follow.
  • gillianseed 14y ago
    From what I've read Surface Pro does _not_ come with office bundled, do you have any information that says it does?
• nodata 14y ago
  Microsoft meet buyer's remorse! Go Microsoft!
• leviathant 14y ago
  The way people are reacting to this reminds me of the initial reaction to Macs ditching the floppy drive or the optical drive. Surface has a fully functional USB port, and Windows 8 supports a bunch of cloud-driven integration out of the box. More and more, I've been moving my important documents online (with the exception of raw audio & video files, which are still too large to bother hosting online right now) If you want more storage, slap an external drive on your Surface. That said, I can't argue that advertising it as a 64gb tablet is any more sensible than Ticketmaster advertising $15 tickets, only to charge you $10 in handling fees when you actually make the purchase. It's not straightforward, and comes off as misleading.
• shocks 14y ago
  But I can't help but thing... What kind of operating system is FORTY ONE GIGABYTES?! My C:\Windows is 20GB, that seems excessive already, and I know for a fact it was originally much smaller. What the hell are Microsoft putting on these things?!
• pwthornton 14y ago
  The moral of this story is not to buy the 64 GB Surface Pro. Hopefully Microsoft will get the message and either reduce the footprint of the OS or only ship 128 GB and above Surface Pros. There is a perfect market solution to this. Don't buy it. Now that I know that the OS takes up an insane amount of space, I have no interest in this product.
• robertwalsh0 14y ago
  Non substantive comment: "That's some bullshit."
  • agscala 14y ago
    You already know why I'm downvoting you.
• tjdetwiler 14y ago
  I think it's a shady thing for MS to do, but the last thing we need is for the Government to regulate something like this.
• recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Original source is here[1] instead of the blogspam by Marco. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8 http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-s...
• beedogs 14y ago
  Why did Microsoft even bother? This is a joke.
• largesse 14y ago
  This is actually institutional for Microsoft. Years ago, when I was developing using Visual Studio and it came on a set of CDs, I saw an article claiming that installing it and MSDN (their offline help system of tech notes since the dawn of time) made you feel like Godzilla had shit on your hard drive. It took up an outrageous amount of storage. The same was true for shrink-wrapped Office.
  • illuminate 14y ago
    I think the difference here is that the OS and full versions of Office are installed with no preconfiguration, whereas the complaints you're referring to were about installing the full version of VS and MSDN including all sample code, lengthy documents, help and test binaries would necessarily take up a large amount of space back then.
• _mgr 14y ago
  Another issue this raises is the likely hood of most to all free space being used up and the impact this will have on the life and performance of the SSD and the Surface Pro is a whole. Do we know the specs of the SSD? What controller type it's using? TRIM support?
• JVIDEL 14y ago
  So recovery takes at least 12GB of those 64? I would like the option to transfer it to a thumbdrive or an extHDD and get all that space back. Still that leaves about 29GB for the windows install, and that TBH is a bit insane, 29 for an OS? even if it comes with Office thats just too much.
• mixmastamyk 14y ago
  Not surprised. Windows in general is extremely inefficient with disk space. It keeps multiple copies of every patch and system dll under the Windows folder for defensive purposes. Recent releases have added "restore points", winsxs, csc, and SoftwareDistribution\downloads, to the original dllcache. I'm not joking when I say you can easily free up 10GB+ on an installation that has been around a while; 100GB if a service pack has been installed. And it only grows unless you actively manage it. This is the shitty design these NT based tablets are facing. It could probably be solved by moving all this crap out of the system folder and into its own folder with an expiration date.
• helloamar 14y ago
  Think Microsoft has gone lazy to come up with a great OS, in other words they are not interested in making one like that, so sad
• astangl 14y ago
  As Bill Gates would say, 23 GB should be enough for anybody.
• nonamegiven 14y ago
  My car has 75 cubic units of space. But 50 units of that are taken up by the engine, dashboard, heater, steering wheel, door panels, insulation matting, seats, spare tire, etc. So there's only 25 cubic units left for people and carrying. But sure, 75 cubic units.
• rome 14y ago
  I'm running Win8 Pro on my laptop. The OS weighs in at about 25GB which means the rest of the bloat comes from the pre-installed apps. Can they be removed?
• Intermernet 14y ago
  Does anyone know if the Surface Pro comes with Office 2013 pre-installed? This may account for some of the usage above and beyond a standard Windows 8 64 bit install.
• gtirloni 14y ago
  In a couple of years this will be unimportant as SSD drives grow in size (and not in price). We've seen this over and over with every new storage media. Microsoft might want to do some trimming there but I wouldn't spent all my time on that.
• isarat 14y ago
  iOS isn't MacOS but Windows 8 is just another Windows! The inefficient disk space usage is quite infamous with Windows. They managed to fit the physical memory by memory combining but failed how to manage the files on storage. Don't be surprised it's Microsoft! They did physical memory compression but forgot how to optimize it well on the dedicated storage.
• gonzalolarralde 14y ago
  There's another thing we are missing here: WTF is Microsoft putting in a 30GB operating system????? Really, come on. 30 gigs of WHAT?
  • scholia 14y ago
    The thing you're missing is any semblance of fact.
• duncankeys 14y ago
  add an sd card then? simple solution 64gb now or 128gb soon, up to 2tb eventually. Cant do that with an ipad