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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 ha

by 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?
    - nasalgoat 14y ago
      Actually, horsepower is rated in SAE net numbers, which includes a full accessory load. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#SAE_net_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#SAE_net_power
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        Some accessories, not all. And specifically not the transmission. They are not quoting you horsepower at the wheels, which is the number you would actually care most about.
        LarrySDonald 14y ago
        If you're saying we should aspire to be as honest as the car industry, could we perhaps aim a little higher and aim for perhaps as honest as the nutritional supplement industry or the mafia?
        danudey 14y ago
        'This is a natural health product, and by that we mean that we don't want to tell you that the nutritional value of our so-called Vitamin Water is actually no better than drinking a soft drink.'
    - pwthornton 14y ago
      Horsepower is fairly useless in cars and trucks and buyers know this. If you care about speed, that's what 0-60 is based on as it factors in power/weight. If you care about hauling stuff, you care about how much it can tow and how much it can put in its bed. This is a roundabout way of saying that Microsoft has a problem on its hands.
  - 89a 14y ago
    It's Hacker News… can we PLEASE talk about computers without resorting to car (or truck) analogies
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ebbv 14y ago
  Actually there's no hard disk at all in there, and I think if there were one, people might be annoyed.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  How do you know? Maybe they only put a 32GB disk in there and lied about the size of the bloated OS?
gfosco 14y ago
Right... Apple set the precedent of not having to specify the size lost to the OS, because that magnitude was acceptable. Many people probably never even noticed it, or attributed it to the normal bytes lost. I would have thought the 64GB Surface Pro would be enough storage for me, but if it only has 23GB usable I would need to upgrade to the 128GB model. I've wanted a Surface Pro since the original announcement, but have been really struggling to come up with any good reasons to buy one.
- nextparadigms 14y ago
  How did Apple set the precedent for that? If you're referring to iOS devices, then they definitely did not set the precedent there. PC manufacturers have advertised total space, not free space, for ages.
  - hfs 14y ago
    PC hard drives are 100% usable space. You can easily overwrite the contents regardless what is on it. Phones and tablets, not so much.
  - gfosco 14y ago
    Ok, you're right and fair point. PC manufacturers were selling drives with data using up space before Apple. I don't think it was ever very large (in size or percentage of the drive) though was it? Computers weren't branded on HD size either, it was never part of the model number... It was an extra component that could be changed. I was referring to iP(ho/o/a)(d/ne)s at 2/4/8/16/32GB, losing a decent percentage, without this type of outcry. Sealed devices, marketed on HD size.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      How quickly people forget. If you had purchased a 486 with a 20mb hard drive, you'd find dos and windows and norton and whatnot very quickly consuming pretty much all of that space.
      - 14y ago
ChuckMcM 14y ago
It's a bit more nuanced than that, Surface Pro runs Windows 8, the iPad runs iOS (not MacOS 10.x) Here is the typical HP blurb about hard drive space (and as far as Surface Pro is concerned that SSD is a "hard drive") "Actual formatted capacity is less. A portion of the hard drive is reserved for system recovery software — for notebooks up to: 30GB (Windows 8 & Windows 7), 12GB (MCE); for desktops up to: 30GB (Windows 8), 14GB (Windows 7), 12GB (MCE). For hard drives 1GB=1 billion bytes. " [1] When is the last time you bought a windows Laptop with less than a 80GB hard drive in it? What was your user experience with that? Somehow, people seem to thing that the Surface Pro is something other than Win8 but it isn't. It's a laptop with an optional keyboard and a touch screen. It is Microsoft's "take" on the Tablet experience. It is a mashup of legacy code and modern product design. It's an unattractive date with an interest in entomology. It's a Macbook Air competitor, not an iPad competitor, the Air btw contains this warning for the 64GB model [2] : "1. 1GB=1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." How much less? They don't even say. But it would be fun to find out. The 'bug' here is that Hard Drives got super big super quick and nobody back in product management got the memo that SSDs were the new hawtness so trim the fat. [1] http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-2000/C2X98AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ00006l-4MBV9;sid=Gyfj-SsykC7K5no6XshKcfM9LzsmrB8u3nKtJc2XEfxuUpGh2ZEJVZLZ?HP-2000z-2c00-Notebook-PC http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Lapt... [2] http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo... EDIT: its -> it's
- pwthornton 14y ago
  This thread seems to indicate that a MacBook Air with 64 GBs of storage would have about 48 GBs free with just the OS, and a bit less with iLife and some other stock apps. Even with iLife, something that the Surface Pro has nothing like, you are getting more usable storage space. So, it sounds like the 64 GB MacBook Air is a much better deal by both being a better thought out machine and having more usable storage space.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    So, it sounds like the 64 GB MacBook Air is a much better deal by both being a better thought out machine and having more usable storage space. Ding, Ding, Ding. Give the man a prize. Yes it is, and that is a problem for Microsoft. The circle is complete, and we can offer Marco an alternative blog post which goes ... "I was amazed to discover how little space was available to the user of the Surface Pro 64GB model. Here, here, and here there are discussions of all the things that are pre-allocated from the SSD. Now it is running a full copy of Windows 8, so all of the OS features are available, but lets compare it to the Macbook Air, a machine with a similar price point and similar computational capability. It leaves Y% of the SSD available and its running Apple's laptop OS MacOS 10. Etc, etc." Perhaps that one will come later. Helps educate the consumer and provides some feedback to Microsoft.
rayiner 14y ago
I don't know why there is so much hand-waving in this thread to get around this obvious fact. Everyone expects some space to be lost to formatting overhead and the OS. But I can't remember in the last decade when a $900 machine shipped with 2/3 of the disk occupied by the system. That's outside the expected range.

by gfodor 14y ago

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?
  - nasalgoat 14y ago
    Actually, horsepower is rated in SAE net numbers, which includes a full accessory load. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#SAE_net_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#SAE_net_power
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      Some accessories, not all. And specifically not the transmission. They are not quoting you horsepower at the wheels, which is the number you would actually care most about.
      - LarrySDonald 14y ago
        If you're saying we should aspire to be as honest as the car industry, could we perhaps aim a little higher and aim for perhaps as honest as the nutritional supplement industry or the mafia?
        danudey 14y ago
        'This is a natural health product, and by that we mean that we don't want to tell you that the nutritional value of our so-called Vitamin Water is actually no better than drinking a soft drink.'
  - pwthornton 14y ago
    Horsepower is fairly useless in cars and trucks and buyers know this. If you care about speed, that's what 0-60 is based on as it factors in power/weight. If you care about hauling stuff, you care about how much it can tow and how much it can put in its bed. This is a roundabout way of saying that Microsoft has a problem on its hands.
- 89a 14y ago
  It's Hacker News… can we PLEASE talk about computers without resorting to car (or truck) analogies
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ebbv 14y ago
Actually there's no hard disk at all in there, and I think if there were one, people might be annoyed.
darkarmani 14y ago
How do you know? Maybe they only put a 32GB disk in there and lied about the size of the bloated OS?

gfosco 14y ago

Right... Apple set the precedent of not having to specify the size lost to the OS, because that magnitude was acceptable. Many people probably never even noticed it, or attributed it to the normal bytes lost. I would have thought the 64GB Surface Pro would be enough storage for me, but if it only has 23GB usable I would need to upgrade to the 128GB model. I've wanted a Surface Pro since the original announcement, but have been really struggling to come up with any good reasons to buy one.

nextparadigms 14y ago
How did Apple set the precedent for that? If you're referring to iOS devices, then they definitely did not set the precedent there. PC manufacturers have advertised total space, not free space, for ages.
- hfs 14y ago
  PC hard drives are 100% usable space. You can easily overwrite the contents regardless what is on it. Phones and tablets, not so much.
- gfosco 14y ago
  Ok, you're right and fair point. PC manufacturers were selling drives with data using up space before Apple. I don't think it was ever very large (in size or percentage of the drive) though was it? Computers weren't branded on HD size either, it was never part of the model number... It was an extra component that could be changed. I was referring to iP(ho/o/a)(d/ne)s at 2/4/8/16/32GB, losing a decent percentage, without this type of outcry. Sealed devices, marketed on HD size.
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    How quickly people forget. If you had purchased a 486 with a 20mb hard drive, you'd find dos and windows and norton and whatnot very quickly consuming pretty much all of that space.
    - 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

It's a bit more nuanced than that, Surface Pro runs Windows 8, the iPad runs iOS (not MacOS 10.x) Here is the typical HP blurb about hard drive space (and as far as Surface Pro is concerned that SSD is a "hard drive") "Actual formatted capacity is less. A portion of the hard drive is reserved for system recovery software — for notebooks up to: 30GB (Windows 8 & Windows 7), 12GB (MCE); for desktops up to: 30GB (Windows 8), 14GB (Windows 7), 12GB (MCE). For hard drives 1GB=1 billion bytes. " [1] When is the last time you bought a windows Laptop with less than a 80GB hard drive in it? What was your user experience with that? Somehow, people seem to thing that the Surface Pro is something other than Win8 but it isn't. It's a laptop with an optional keyboard and a touch screen. It is Microsoft's "take" on the Tablet experience. It is a mashup of legacy code and modern product design. It's an unattractive date with an interest in entomology. It's a Macbook Air competitor, not an iPad competitor, the Air btw contains this warning for the 64GB model [2] : "1. 1GB=1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." How much less? They don't even say. But it would be fun to find out. The 'bug' here is that Hard Drives got super big super quick and nobody back in product management got the memo that SSDs were the new hawtness so trim the fat. [1] http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-2000/C2X98AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ00006l-4MBV9;sid=Gyfj-SsykC7K5no6XshKcfM9LzsmrB8u3nKtJc2XEfxuUpGh2ZEJVZLZ?HP-2000z-2c00-Notebook-PC http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Lapt... [2] http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo... EDIT: its -> it's

pwthornton 14y ago
This thread seems to indicate that a MacBook Air with 64 GBs of storage would have about 48 GBs free with just the OS, and a bit less with iLife and some other stock apps. Even with iLife, something that the Surface Pro has nothing like, you are getting more usable storage space. So, it sounds like the 64 GB MacBook Air is a much better deal by both being a better thought out machine and having more usable storage space.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  So, it sounds like the 64 GB MacBook Air is a much better deal by both being a better thought out machine and having more usable storage space. Ding, Ding, Ding. Give the man a prize. Yes it is, and that is a problem for Microsoft. The circle is complete, and we can offer Marco an alternative blog post which goes ... "I was amazed to discover how little space was available to the user of the Surface Pro 64GB model. Here, here, and here there are discussions of all the things that are pre-allocated from the SSD. Now it is running a full copy of Windows 8, so all of the OS features are available, but lets compare it to the Macbook Air, a machine with a similar price point and similar computational capability. It leaves Y% of the SSD available and its running Apple's laptop OS MacOS 10. Etc, etc." Perhaps that one will come later. Helps educate the consumer and provides some feedback to Microsoft.

rayiner 14y ago

I don't know why there is so much hand-waving in this thread to get around this obvious fact. Everyone expects some space to be lost to formatting overhead and the OS. But I can't remember in the last decade when a $900 machine shipped with 2/3 of the disk occupied by the system. That's outside the expected range.