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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
by 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 agoIt's still a bit disingenuous. Most people (and Microsoft surely knows this) think "available" even though it is advertised as "storage".
- grecy 14y agoConsider 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 agoThose are all pretty terrible analogies.
- jlgreco 14y agoAre they? The difference is the difference between "technically correct" and "correct in a way that is relevant to the consumer".
- laumars 14y agoI 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.
- smackfu 14y agoHow about buying vegetables by weight in the grocery store, but that weight includes inedible stuff. That's a real thing that happens.
- achompas 14y agoCan't think of a vegetable that is only one-third edible.
- smackfu 14y agoOh, I got one! Not a vegetable, but lobster is sold by the pound, but it's only 20% edible meat.
- ConceptJunkie 14y agoI would imagine peanuts in the shell probably have close to half the weight being the inedible shells. What about a coconut? I'm sure there is some kind of vegetable product where you don't eat 2/3 of it. For instance; Peas. I hate peas, so I consider them well short of one-third edible. Maybe the Surface Pro should be called the Microsoft Eat Your Peas.
- vamsmack84 14y agoI bought a 500 gram bag of pistachio nuts shelled them and found that exactly half of the weight was the shell. It's the Surface Pistachio.
- jlgreco 14y agoA bridge that advertises a 5 ton maximum, but 4 of those tons are used up by the road surface.
- nextparadigms 14y agoWhat? Where do they do that? If they did, then that's pretty crazy. How can they say the "bridge can support 5 tons", but it would only support 1? That would destroy the bridge when some large vehicle tried to pass over it.
- InfinityX 14y agoIt's an analogy.
- evan_ 14y agoIt's an example of something analogous that would be crazy.
- Stratoscope 14y agoActually, the system they use measures only the useful load supported by the bridge, not the road surface and other bridge components. It's really quite elegant. Here, Calvin's dad can explain it better than I can: http://i.imgur.com/bYe67.gif http://i.imgur.com/bYe67.gif
- talmir 14y agowoosh
- jamesjguthrie 14y agoI think you make good points and was all ready to disagree with the OP until I read your points.
- achompas 14y agoApproximately 0% of Microsoft's target customer base will wipe and install Linux. People buying this thing want Windows. I would normally agree re: Marco (I've had to move on as he further embraces Apple linkbait), and there's no chance the FTC intervenes here, but this is absurd. We're not talking about losing 4GB on an iOS device--users are losing two-thirds of the Surface's advertised capacity the moment they set it up.
- ConceptJunkie 14y agoThe sad thing is that 2/3 of what's on the drive is probably stuff most users won't want. (Insert Windows 8 joke here). Just think of all the shovelware that gets installed on a typical Windows machine. I have no doubts that Microsoft won't do the same thing.
- scholia 14y agoWant to bet on that?
- benaiah 14y agoActually, they have a pretty strict policy of not including shovelware, to the point that the Microsoft Stores will, for a small fee, remove all the shovelware from a computer that they didn't even sell.
- eclipxe 14y agoNothing for Microsoft to be proud of there.
- achompas 14y agoThe strictest policy would prevent licensees from pre-loading shovelware onto new PCs to begin with. But that's an argument for another time.
- scholia 14y agoMicrosoft CANNOT prevent licensees from loading any old crap they like. The US Justice Department sued Microsoft to establish this fact, and put a judge in oversight for the next decade. The DoJ also prevented Microsoft from doing deals with the top 10 Windows OEMs, and compelled it to supply them all at the same price. This prevented Microsoft from doing any deals that would be unfavourable to any OEMs who chose to provide slow, badly-installed, crapware-filled systems. Obviously this was a tremendous benefit to the American public, and to the rest of the world, which doesn't have a choice or a voice when the DoJ makes the rules.
- scholia 14y ago(a) Marco is an Apple fanboy so he's not supposed to have a sense of perspective. He doesn't really need to have any sense at all.... (b) Maybe Marco hasn't discovered cloud storage yet... Or the microSD card.
- georgemcbay 14y agoI don't think the difference is "huge". I'm a professional programmer and even I'm surprised by the advertised space versus the usable space. I'd have guessed you'd have like 54GB or so free, not 23. I find marco to be a bit of a pro-Apple shill, eclipsed only by Gruber and Siegler, but he's right here, and I say that as someone who is often accused of being a Microsoft-shill by my more hardcore FOSS buddies.