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Surface Pro versus MacBook Air: Who's being dishonest with storage space?

318 points by CrankyBear 14y ago

cooldeal 14y ago
The Ars review of the Surface Pro has more details on disk space: Unlike Office in Windows RT, this Office is fully uninstallable if you don't like it. Doing so will liberate about 2.3 GB of disk space. Even if you keep Office, you'll have more disk space than Microsoft claims. How much? The 128 GB Surface Pro has a formatted capacity of 119 (binary) GB and change. A total of 8.4 GB is used for recovery data, of which 7.8 GB can be reclaimed if you prefer to keep your recovery image on external media. This leaves 110.5 GB for the main partition. On a brand new Surface Pro, about 89 (binary) GB are available. Occupying that 20 GB are 3.3 GB of hibernation file, 4 GB of pagefile, 2.3 GB of Office 2013, 10.4 GB of Windows, built-in/default apps, and so on and so forth. Presuming the sizes of the applications remain comparable on the 64 GB model (with its 59 binary, GB formatted capacity) one would expect to see about 29 GB available by default. Take off Office and the recovery partition and there will be close to 40 GB available.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  7.8 GB recoverable recovery 3.3 GM hibernation file 4.0 GB pagefile 2.3 GB Office 10.4 GB Windows + other default apps --------- 27.8 GB Which seems to indicate that you can recover 27.8 - 10.4 GB, or 17.4 GB. I'd like to see a chart like that for the Air. The comparison in the article is with the Macbook Air, which is a laptop, not a laptop/tablet hybrid. I think this is instructive, however. My understanding is that there is no hibernation file and pagefile on an iPad. It's not trying to be a laptop. Likewise, there is no recovery partition on the iPad. (And I see very little need of one.) The Surface Pro is a laptop in a tablet format. It's basically an old stylus tablet PC from the early 2000's done with 2012 technology, capacitative touch, and some design ideas from iPad style tablets layered on top. Like my old tc1100 stylus tablet PC, you can use it for the same use cases as an iPad. However, there are important differences: Holding it in bed would be a bit of a stunt. I can do it with my tc1100 if I rest my elbow on the bed and balance the thing along its diagonal through the center of gravity, with the corner resting firmly in my palm, whereas holding the iPad is like holding a book: something I don't have to think too much about. (That said, the iPad is already at the upper limit of what's tenable for me to not notice weight wise.) Like the old tc1100, I have to be mindful of vents. A total non-issue with the iPad. I don't know what term there would be for this quality, but it's like a magic slab of touchable light. Having to think about vents ruins that. Like the old tc1100, I would have to be mindful of battery per work session. To give credit where credit is due, the battery on the Surface Pro lasts 2X as long. However, I can put the tc1100 to sleep and hot-swap battery, so one extra battery gives me as much work endurance. Basically, they're missing three of the essential qualities that make the iPad great as a tablet. I think they would've done better to go whole hog on the tablet/laptop hybrid idea like the IdeaPad Yoga and the Inspiron Duo. By pretending to be a tablet, they're setting up a bunch of expectations that aren't gong to be met. The tablet/hybrid is good enough for occasionally folding up as a tablet and passing around at a meeting, and doesn't seem to carry expectations beyond that. Also, what benefit is there to be had from a tablet/laptop hybrid that I couldn't get from an "ultrabook" laptop with an 8.9" tablet? Instead of one device that's mediocre as a tablet and a laptop, I could have two devices that are great in each situation, for little additional weight. (For one thing, I could use the hybrid with a Wacom digitizer to do double duty as a poor-man's Cintiq, but that's kind of niche.)
  - Indyan 14y ago
    You can't just chop off the page file. Disabling it entirely or reducing it significantly can and will affect system performance.
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      That shouldn't be the case. So many linux machines are doing fine with swap disabled. Regardless, there's no reason for hibernation and page file to be different. They can (and should) be the same file.
      - ygra 14y ago
        Oh? So where do you put swapped-out pages when you go into hibernation? Or would you first need to defragment your page file contents just to dump RAM contents into it? Or keep a map what pages in the pagefile are swapped out and what are just hibernated RAM and then piece stuff together on wake-up again?
        hackmiester 14y ago
        Linux can write the suspend-to-disk data to the swap partition, and this comment really made me wonder how...
        richardwhiuk 14y ago
        You simply swap out all your memory. There's no technical difference between a hibernated page and a swapped out page - the only difference is that the OS normally prevents certain pages (e.g. kernel pages) from being swapped out to preserve performance.
      - freehunter 14y ago
        Your argument is seriously "Windows should be Linux"?
        stcredzero 14y ago
jedmeyers 14y ago
I am curious if the author checked out what's that thing called GiB is before he started ranting about Microsoft vs. Apple disk size discrepancies?
- kitsune_ 14y ago
  The guy isn't ranting. The article is matter-of-fact in tone. The mebi-/gibi-/...-byte (metric) definition was standardized rather late (late 90's). By that time the general public was already accustomed to the (now wrong) binary interpretation of a MB or GB. Also of note: The GB was actually once defined by the IEEE as 1024^3 bytes.
  - mbreese 14y ago
    The entire thing read like a rant to me... I don't read him all that often though, so I don't know if that is his normal style.
    - scholia 14y ago
      "Rant" means "to speak or declaim extravagantly or violently; talk in a wild or vehement way; rave" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rant http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rant So either you don't know what a rant is, or you don't understand English very well.
  - jedmeyers 14y ago
    __WAS__ defined. How is it defined now by the IEEE?
  - nessus42 14y ago
    For better or worse, disk manufacturers have been using base 10 megabytes and gigabytes for a couple of decades now. Sure, that switch was marketing driven, but criticizing Apple for eventually switching to the same nomenclature universally used by the storage industry qualifies as a "rant" in my book. If Apple started doing that for RAM, which is still universally quantified using base 2 gigabytes, now that would be rant-worthy.
beagle3 14y ago
tl;dr: On the 128GB models (Surface Pro vs. Macbook Air), they both leave ~90GB free space. The problem for Microsoft is that they are competing at the same time against laptops and tablets. For someone who's looking for a tablet, it loses badly to an iPad (the free space sticks out, but it is by now means the only place an iPad wins). For someone who's looking for a laptop, it loses to many laptops (in price, performance, ergonomics - whatever it is you care about, there's something that handily beats the Surface Pro). Are there any people who are looking for something that's sort-of-a-tablet and sort-of-a-laptop, and are willing to get a device that is not competitive as either? We'll soon find out. My own experience leads me to believe that until you have perfected a niche (neither laptops or tablets are there yet), extreme specialization always wins against generalization.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >For someone who's looking for a laptop, it loses to many laptops (in price, performance, ergonomics - whatever it is you care about, there's something that handily beats the Surface Pro Is there an ultrabook laptop with a 1080p touchscreen, an active digitizer with a stylus, atleast Core i5 for $1000 to $1100 ? I am not being facetious here, I am looking to buy something to replace my 6 year old laptop so looking for real suggestions here.
  - acchow 14y ago
    Asus Zenbook Prime. $999 at B&H. 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U, 4GB, 128GB SSD, 13" 1080p screen. Edit: Oops, didn't notice the digitizer requirement. Please disregard.
    - mens_rea 14y ago
      Nope. No Digitizer. Thanks for playing.
    - replax 14y ago
      Unfortunately does not have a wacom digitiser nor touch screen...
  - 14y ago
DannoHung 14y ago
The numbers reported for the 128 version weren't what people were griping about.
grecy 14y ago
> And with one minor tweak that doesn’t affect the system’s capabilities in any way If that were the case, why would that feature even be included? Obviously it does impact the capabilities, when things go wrong. Also interesting to note they call it a "minor tweak". What percentage of tablet (or laptop) users even know about a recovery image? I small fraction, I'd wager.
- timdorr 14y ago
  They're referring to the recovery partition. And while most of the time you're never going to need such a thing, when you're dealing with a device like the Surface it's going to come in very handy when you do.
  - dmboyd 14y ago
    This is just a personal anecdote , but I've had a large number of Dell laptops (100+) which all seem to have recovery partitions rather than install media now days. Whenever something fails, it's been a hard drive hardware failure, In which case the recovery partition is completely useless. I have never used a recovery partition successfully.
    - hkmurakami 14y ago
      The fact that you have such a large number of laptops in your possession suggests to me that you're probably in a corporate IT setting (apologies if I'm wrong). In such a case, Hardware failures are probably going to be the most prevalent mode of failure for needing a system re-image, since software usage is going to be in-line with corporate policies. People aren't going to venture into warez sites, etc. But for the average, non-technical user, I think you'd see a much higher incidence of needing a system re-image due to viruses, malware, spyware, etc.
      - drakeandrews 14y ago
        But then the average user is likely to take it to any number of computer repair shops who might try the recovery partition, or they might just reimage from an OEM install disk they have lying around/available.
callahad 14y ago
This is frustrating. The Surface Pro has a 128 GB option and goes down from there to 64 GB. The Macbook Air has a 128 GB option and goes up from there to 512 GB. Edit: this is factually incorrect. There is also a 64 GB MacBook Air model on offer; I forgot about it. I apologize. ~90 GB of free space on both 128 GB models seems reasonable. Stepping down to just ~26 GB free on the 64 GB model seems unreasonable: the usable capacity is less than half of the advertised capacity. I feel similarly about the recovery partition discussion. If you remove the recovery image, I presume you will not be able to recover the Surface Pro without additional media. The Macbook Air, on the other hand, will allow you to do a fresh re-installation of OS X over the Internet with a completely blank disk: it's baked into the firmware. Therefore, removing the recovery image results in a feature disparity between the systems. Grumble.
- mxxx 14y ago
  Agreed, it's a bit of a straw man. It's certainly an issue that hard drive capacity is advertised as being higher than it actually is (and that BS apple is pulling is inexcusable), but the actual issue people were taking with the Surface is the fact that when you buy it it's packed so full of bloat and crapware that half the useable disk space is already depleted on a 64gb model.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >but the actual issue people were taking with the Surface is the fact that when you buy it it's packed so full of bloat and crapware What bloat and crapware are you talking about? Office? If the 128GB MBA is taking up similar space, does it mean that it too comes with "bloat and crapware" ?
  - soperj 14y ago
    Pretty sure a bunch of that used space is actually just a recovery partition that you can get rid of if you want to.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      You shouldn't have to tweak a consumer device fresh out of the box. Heck, I program on my MBA and literally the only thing I've done is let it run Software Update when it asks me, change the wallpaper, and dial up the trackpad speed.
incongruity 14y ago
I think part of this comes from the abstractions used for tablets vs. "traditional" computers. (With the surface being viewed as a tablet by most consumers, vs. the air being seen as a traditional laptop). In tablets, the trend seems to be to abstract away/hide the OS as much as possible – it isn't something that runs on the machine, it is the machine – if that makes sense. Compare this to the laptop world where we're all engrained to conceive of the OS as something that is installed on the machine and in most/all cases is able to be swapped out (insert plug for your favorite Linux distro here, etc.) So, given that, most consumers willingly accept the space the OS takes up as a given on the laptop yet the same people see the listing the tablet storage including the space required for the OS as disingenuous. When you want to abstract away something, if your abstraction leaks, it usually hampers the user experience or user perception of the offering – as this case illustrates (IMHO).
- barista 14y ago
  Actually for Microsoft a tablet was always a fully capable computer. It's apple who came up with a big iPod touch and started calling it a tablet.
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Yes, but how do consumers see it? It's framed as competing with the iPad - and most see it as a tablet, I'd wager.
    - scholia 14y ago
      The Surface RT is a tablet (that also happens to run Microsoft Office). The Surface Pro is a PC (that also happens to work as a tablet). I can understand consumers being confused (though I have no evidence that they are) but surely it's not too hard for HN readers to understand...
wtallis 14y ago
The author wrongly dismisses the impact of the SSD's spare area on usable storage: > "The parts about wear-leveling blacks and bad blocks are just part of how SSDs work. On a new SSD these numbers should be very small." This is absolutely wrong. Modern SSDs reserve a significant part of their NAND even when new. For example, the Micron C400 used in the Surface Pro has 128GiB of NAND and reserves 6.8% as spare area, and thus presents to the OS as a 119.2GiB block device. An Intel SSD 525 with the same 128GiB of NAND reserves 12.6% spare area, so it presents 111.8GiB to the OS. The author's MacBook Air seems to have about 11.7% spare area. They're still fundamentally the same amount of storage, but drives with smaller spare area will generally perform worse when they are nearly full, and having less spare area can also reduce the longevity of the drive.
- wmf 14y ago
  There's still a problem where Apple appears to be advertising a 120 GB SSD as 128 GB.
  - wtallis 14y ago
    All SSDs advertised as either 128GB or 120GB come with exactly 128GiB of total NAND, with 5-15% reserved as spare area. If the spare area is chosen to be 6.87%, then that exactly accounts for the difference between a binary gigabyte (GiB) and decimal gigabyte, so a 128GiB SSD can have exactly 128 decimal GB of usable space.
    - wmf 14y ago
      But Apple's SSD doesn't have 128 GB of usable space; it has 121 GB. Other companies that advertise 128 GB give you 128 GB of usable space.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  I am confused, does the Surface Pro come with a 128GiB HDD or a 119GiB HDD? I was of the impression that it was 128GB i.e 119GiB.
Dylan16807 14y ago
This is ridiculous. The complaint was always about the 64GB model. 75% is fine. 35% is not. Very simple.
- barista 14y ago
  and 64 GB MBA has the same problem.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Does it? A cursory google suggests that the 64GB MBA also comes with the drive about 70-75% free.
rickdale 14y ago
I recently purchased a 4TB external hard drive. It was the first hard drive I have ever come across that had exactly 4tb of free space when I opened it. Usually its a little bit less. I can remember my 80gig hard drive I spent all summer saving up for back around 2000 only have 66gigs and being totally bummed out. I know with flash memory the units are more exact, but are they getting better with the spinning hd's with the space accuracy?
- janus 14y ago
  Do you have a mac? OS x reports free space differently since the last few versions
- callahad 14y ago
  > are they getting better with the spinning hd's with the space accuracy? It's not so much a question of accuracy as it is one of units. Storage manufacturers have typically used GB, software has typically used GiB, labeled as "GB." 1 GB = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes 1 GiB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes Which is why your 80,000,000,000 byte HD is 80 GB on the box but 74.5 GiB when plugged in. OS X 10.6 decided to harmonize the two: it reports size in terms of GB (10^9), abandoning GiB (2^30), meaning what you see on the box finally matches what you see in software. The downside is that your files appear larger than you may be used to, since that "1.00 GB" (GiB) file is now being reported as "1.07 GB."
adnrw 14y ago
> Microsoft has been pummeled by critics this week over supposedly inadequate storage space in its new Surface Pro. It wasn't about the inadequacy of the storage space in and of itself – 25/64GB or 90/128GB is not decidedly inadequate for all users, and is (as the article explains) in the ballpark of usable space for comparable laptops. There's a separate issue regarding the advertising of storage industry-wide that has merit, but this issue is about the amount of usable storage space in the context of the rest of the tablet market. Sure, the Surface is comparable on storage space to competing laptops including those offered by Apple, but it's not even in the same ballpark as competing tablets. Microsoft is pitching the Surface as a competitor to both tablets and laptops, separately and together. It therefore needs to compete against features of both, and it seems it can't when it comes to this specific feature.
- r00fus 14y ago
  Even the 64GB MB Air gives you more room than the Surface Pro 64GB. About 10GB more. That's 33% more usable space. It's not clear that MS should have released the 64GB model for Surface Pro - too much overhead just looks poorly designed.
comex 14y ago
Note that the OS X recovery partition is only 650 MB, since it downloads the actual installation image from the internet on the fly. Are you sure that the Surface Pro's disk actually offers 127.90 GB of block device? To my inexpert ears, that seems to imply that it's actually larger than 128 GB, which sounds wrong.
rbn 14y ago
This is for people who want tablet + laptop but dont want carry+charge+pay for 2 devices. It's really not that difficult to understand, I dont know why HN has such a hard time understanding this. "But the iPad is a better tablet!!!", yeh but the surface is a full system. "But the air is better laptop!!" yeh but the surface has tablet capabilities. "Buy an Air + iPad!!" I dont want to pay extra plus its a hassle to carry + manage 2 devices
- rayiner 14y ago
  I don't think HN has a hard time understanding it, they just think it's not going to be a successful product. Device consolidation is always tricky, but for it to be really successful the integrated device has to be "good enough" in both areas. E.g. people don't buy consumer digital cameras anymore because cell phone cameras are perfectly serviceable. Is the Surface Pro a "good enough" laptop? I'd argue no, not with the keyboard/trackpad situation and lack of a rigid connecting hinge. Ars's review noted as much. As it a "good enough" tablet? I'd argue no, not with the weight, heat, and short battery life. Now, obviously "good enough" is in the eye of the beholder. When people rag on Surface Pro, the thinking is that it's not going to be "good enough" in both roles for the majority of customers, and as such isn't going to sell. The situation is complicated by the fact that the unit is priced at more serious users, those who can't get away with an iPad + keyboard attachment by itself. Those users are more likely to see the keyboard/trackpad issue as a deal breaker for serious work. Less serious users, who don't need the extra capability, have no reason to look at it over an iPad. Also, don't forget about how 7" tablets factor into the equation, because they make it more practical to carry a laptop + tablet. An 11.6" MBA + iPad Mini 16GB will run you $1330 versus about $1030 for 64GB for the Surface, and weigh in at around a pound heavier. But, in return you get more combined screen real estate, more combined storage, and triple the combined battery life.
  - edtechdev 14y ago
    Also, there is choice. There is the Asus Transformer Book coming out, which is perhaps even more powerful (i7) and has a dockable keyboard with extra battery. Or if you want something not as powerful but lighter weight, without a noisy fan, and much better battery life, there is the Asus Vivotab TF810C out now, or the Samsung ATIV Smart PC, although they have the clovertrail atom processor which looks like may not allow installing Linux.
nicholassmith 14y ago
Interesting he mentions removing the Windows recovery partition, but not the ML one which is hardly top secret knowledge. Apple is no better, but none of the other manufacturers are. Storage space is one of those wonderful facts which turn out not to be as factual they could be.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  Apple has at least taken up using the manufacturer advertised figures instead of using the real size. So a 1TB drive in Mac OS X looks like it can store 1 TB of data. If you were to download 1 TiB of data from the internet you'd find that your 1 TB disk is a little small ;-).
mattbee 14y ago
Wow, and I thought Disk Utility was only a piece of shit for hiding partitions from me :-) We've had at least one dispute with a customer who didn't get the "advertised" storage space when buying hosting - it's easy to you say this server has 8 x 500GB drives in a RAID10, but we've had a customer unhappy when 1.9 binary terabytes of data didn't fit onto that after RAID metadata, filesystem overhead etc. So the new product (bigv.io) expresses storage and RAM in binary gigabytes, and I'm thinking I might convert all the dedicated server storage specifications away from lying drive manufacturer sizes, even if that means advertising a 465GiB disc. (or should we advertise size after ext3 overhead arrrggghh).
- klodolph 14y ago
  I hope you stick with the decimal units, because it means that if I have 8 x 500 GB drives, that's 4 GB. If I have 8 x 500 GiB, then I have 3.90625 TiB, which I need a calculator for. Frustrating and annoying. Stick with metric, it's easier on us humans.
ari_elle 14y ago
Nitpick (and most likely even considered OT): - Mac OS shows storage space the right way, because it shows capacity in KB/GB (which is base 10 by definition) - Windows OS shows storage space the wrong way, because while using base 2, it still claims to show you space in KB,GB (but actually it's GiB) To what is generally better: Well for the common user GB might make more sense, since every storage device is marketed with GB in mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes And people who feel cheated because of less storage space seem to ignore the fact that this tablet is running a full Windows Operating system. I guess it's just the mindset of many to think of tablets as "big smartphones" instead of compact full-fledged computers.
- curiousdannii 14y ago
  When did the redefining of a KB from 1024 bytes to 1000 bytes happen? And has it truly happened? If you get 2GB RAM don't you get 2048 MB, not 2000 MB? I've always thought it was just the harddrive manufacturers being stingy, claiming their drives had more than they actually did.
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    The switch - although not in my head - came when more people got computers, cameras and iPods, being exposed to storage compared to computers, where they didn't care or know. People care about storage since the store large amounts of mp3 and images. 1000KB = 1GB, 1000GB = 1TB is easier for most people than 1024KiB = 1GiB, 1024Gib = 1TiB.
    - scholia 14y ago
      Manufactures do it because bigger numbers sell better than smaller ones. Which works fine until people create or download a few files and find they have been conned: they don't have as much usable space as they thought they'd paid for.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    The redefining went the other way. Under the conventions of metric prefixes, k has always meant 1000, not 1024. It was only in the computer industry that k was bastardized to mean 1024, and once enough people realized it was wrong, they created the ki prefix to indicate the 10th power of 2.
bdcravens 14y ago
Desktops and laptops have already reported drive capacity like this: total capacity before OS + apps. Tablets and smart phones, as they've existed in the marketplace since 2007, advertise available space. Most people think of the Surface as the Windows version of an iPad, not a new form factor for a traditional laptop. As such, they need to be marketed like their cohorts.
gabriel34 14y ago
This is a bought arcticle if I ever saw one. Two wrongs don't make one right.
- scholia 14y ago
  You're a jerk if ever I saw one.
rjempson 14y ago
The fact this conversation is taking place is very droll. Articles are being written, comments and forums are running hot just because so many people are effectively saying "How dare someone say that my favourite vendor's computer has less disk space than another (obviously inferior) vendor"
- mmcconnell1618 14y ago
  Isn't anyone just happy to not have a spinning platter of metal in their laptop? There has always been a difference between unformatted and formatted space on disks. Look at an old box of 1.44MB floppy disks and you'll clearly see that formatted space and unformatted space are reported separately. The same thing goes for hard drives. What file system you put on the HD can make a difference too. There will always be somewhat less space than the full raw capacity. In this case the problem appears to be shipping large pre-installed software and OS on a smallish SSD. Five years from now when higher capacity is cheaper, no one will even care.
el_cuadrado 14y ago
I think the author is missing a point here: Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet. I am ok with 'wasted' space on a computer, because first, I expect OS to have a substantial footprint, and second - I can see, touch, and actually 'consume' the OS files. I am not ok with wasted space on a tablet, because to me it is a glorified book reader/mp3 player; I expect to use all the available space for storage. Wait, you are saying Surface is actually a computer (although a shitty one), not a tablet? Well, then MSFT completely failed to communicate this message. Which is pretty regular problem for MSFT.
- pycassa 14y ago
  define "full-blown computer"
- kooshball 14y ago
  > Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet. You are wrong. The Surface Pro, which is what we're talking about here, is a full-blown computer just like the MBA. It can run VMs as well. Or any other software you can run on a windows laptop.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Is the disk in the surface interchangeable (without performing a surgical procedure)? What about the MBA?
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Yadda yadda yadda, doesn't matter. When people buy a laptop they expect the OS will take up a good chunk of the storage space. When people buy a tablet they don't have that expectation. More importantly, when the free space is significantly less than half the advertized storage and there is no warning that's the case people are going to be surprized and upset, and rightfully so. In a Macbook Air the worst you get is a reduction to about 70-75% of the listed storage capacity (in the 128 or 64 gb models), which is annoying but not crazy. In the Surface Pro 64 model you are reduced to about 1/3 of the initial capacity, which is ridiculous and definitely deserves some sort of warning on the packaging, I would think. Expecting a reduction by 1/4 is reasonable common sense, experiencing a reduction by 2/3 is surprising.
- jimktrains2 14y ago
  >When people buy a laoptop they expect the OS will take up a good chunk of the storage space.[sic] Why? My linux install has a full dev environment and office suite and doesn't take a ton of room.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    People's expectations aren't based on your Linux install.
    - jimktrains2 14y ago
      I just meant there is no reason the OS needs to be so large.
      - mikeash 14y ago
        Certainly, but the OSes that people typically encounter are, so they expect that because it's what they see.
        gcr 14y ago
        Isn't that a problem that we should address? Users expect their office suites to crash, but that doesn't mean that we as developers shouldn't be constantly trying to improve our code.
Tloewald 14y ago
So having "proven" Windows 8 has no advertising (by somehow claiming the apps with ads weren't really part of Windows 8) Ed Bott turns to proving the 128GB Surface has more storage space than the Macbook Air by deleting tons of stuff from the Surface and nearly freeing up as much space as the latter has by default.
stephengillie 14y ago
This is stupid. This is like asking which car cabin has the most air volume, and finding that Toyota's larger seats mean its cabin can't hold as much air as Honda's.
merinid 14y ago
who cares about storage space when you can keep everything in the cloud. my computer is as commodity as my jeans, friends. Access over dependence.
- rjempson 14y ago
  your friends are a commodity. now that's really nice :-)
  - merinid 14y ago
    No no, my jeans are the commodity. Friends is just who i was addressing that sentence too. Read into the comma. Lol.
nakovet 14y ago
Basically the article says: Microsoft lies to you, Apple lies to you and basically everyone is lying to you when it comes to store in hard drives, pen drives, SSD, etc. At least our bandwidth limitations follow the base we are expecting too, can you imagine you have 100 GB / monthly but for real is 9X something? The industry is laughing on us.
justinhj 14y ago
One differentiator is that Macs come with iLife suite that are a pretty extensive and popular addition, whereas windows comes with office which is easily replaced for most people with free and/or cloud offerings.
- jeswin 14y ago
  I don't use a Mac or Windows. But I suspect that in the real world, Office is way more "extensive and popular" than iLife.
  - justinhj 14y ago
    Well most of the people I know in the real world that are casual home computer users get a lot more use out of apps like iPhoto and iMovie than word. Especially because most of them just use Google docs for writing letters.
- jordanthoms 14y ago
  ... Did you really just argue that iLife is more valuable than office? Now I have truly seen everything.
  - justinhj 14y ago
    No I didn't argue. It's just my perspective.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
Why is this being compared to the macbook air and not the ipad?
- bhauer 14y ago
  Because people like myself cross-shop the Surface Pro against compact ultrabook-class laptops. I have opted to go with Surface Pro because of the added flexibility of its design versus this group I consider to be its competition. I did not cross-shop with iPad and Nexus 10.
- NZ_Matt 14y ago
  Because the Surface Pro's specs match or surpass? a macbook air. It just so happens that it's a PC in a tablet hybrid form factor.
- silix 14y ago
  Because the Surface PRO runs full desktop Photoshop, Visual Studio, Office, Hyper-v and Skrim. You can also plug in a full USB keyboard and mouse (the OS supports a pointer), use a digitizer pen or an XBox controller.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I'm so embarrassed. A week ago I defended that people could be reasonable about Microsoft, their products and the Surface. The comment threads here today have been pathetic. If this is the biggest issue to bitch about regarding the Surface then the Surface Pro 2.0 should be an easy target to nail. Jesus there are people writing rants in this thread that don't even understand that the Surface Pro is specd similarly to the macbook air (except the surface has a much better screen)
Uchikoma 14y ago
Wow, such a long article, about essentially nothing. About the 2 or 10 base, yes I think it's stupid (living 30yrs with the 2 base) but thats the way it is. MS reports GiB and Apple report GB, so it's wrong to claim both Apple and MS report their capacity in GB. "The measurements are just expressed differently, in a way that makes Apple look generous and Microsoft look stingy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
JuDue 14y ago
Everything comes back to Balmer's disdain for the iPad as being an overpriced netbook device that nobody will ever use. MS is furiously trying to merge tablets into fully fledged PCs. I can almost guarantee that by Windows 9 they will have some success with this, and hardware will get better and better. But that's not to say the tablet space doesn't have enormous potential as reduced and simplified user experiences. Microsoft is betting a lot of its chips on pushing full Windows onto smaller devices. One key detail is that Office 365 seems to completely misjudge expectations of tablet computing.
bad_user 14y ago
I've got a Thinkpad on which I replaced the hard-disk with a 128 GB SSD and installed Ubuntu on it (using fulldisk encryption with dm-crypt / LUKS). I've got about 100 GB of usable space after having installed a shit ton of apps, libraries and utilities I needed, stuff like Emacs, OpenJDK (with sources), IntelliJ IDEA, RVM with dozens of Java/Scala libraries downloaded through Maven/SBT, dozens of ruby gems, dozens of Python libraries, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Memcached, Gimp, Dropbox, GCC, many header/dev packages, some games and the list can go on. I should mention that I'm not using a Swap, because I've got enough RAM and as long as I've got Suspend, I don't care about Hibernation. But I'm talking about Ubuntu 12.10, which is probably the most bloated Linux distribution I ever used. What the hell is in Windows or OS X that takes so much space?
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  Backwards compatibility. My Windows 8 Pro is 19.2 GiB (on disk). Of which 9.67 GiB is WinSxS. Which is essentially a giant component library containing dozens of different versions of DLLs third party programs use. 1.67 GiB is the driver store. 1.36 GiB is the 32 bit sub-system (SysWoW64). 700 MiB is the .Net framework (versions 1 through 4). So now we're down to 5.94 GiB of "stuff" which we can call the "OS" if you'd like, without any compatibility bits. Linux is so tiny because Linux has a terrible backwards compatibility record. Fortunately this is hard to spot because the distro's do such a great job of hiding it (and automate much of that via their respective package managers). But if Linux DID care about backwards compatibility at every level then the OS would be huge too, since you'd need tons of old libraries built in, tons of drivers for redundant hardware, and gunk like that.
_debug_ 14y ago
Again, the top comment on an HN thread involving Apple is one that supports Apple by digging up some "fact" or the other that makes Apple look OK. This has always been this ridiculous. At least AAPL investors are pricing in a future loss of earnings as everyone except the hardcore fanboys move to more open platforms that are priced at 75% to 50% of Apple products and allow you to plug in USB and play along well with other manufacturer's hardware by implementing open protocols like DLNA. Anecdote : I bought an LG TV and discovered without doing any additional setup, my Samsung phone now shows a TV icon on the photos, and when I clicked it, I was surprised to find the photo pop up on the TV. As I swipe my finger on the phone, the photos scroll on the TV. Voila! I honestly don't know whether this is some kind of PnP broadcast, DLNA, WiDi, or what! Next : my HP laptop has an Intel WiDi app on it and the TV has a "Wifi Screen Share". Hmm, let's see...bang! Laptop screen now wirelessly mirrored on the TV. LG TV, Samsung phone, HP laptop. I bet Apple products would not work with anything other than Apple this way.
- bjustin 14y ago
  Yep, just like everyone moved from iPods to other MP3 players that show up as removable storage.
beagle3 14y ago
This thread seems to be full of good advice about laptops, so maybe I can get help on something slightly unrelated: Anyone have recommendation for a tablet (or laptop that converts to tablet) that has outdoor readable screen? Not direct sun, but sitting-in-the-car-on-a-sunny-day readable. So far, HP EliteBook with its "outdoor readable screen" option (extra $100 and 2 week wait) is the best I've found, and it's not very good. Lenovo's outdoor readable screen comes close, but is not as good. I'm sure this is a solved problem - but I can't find a decent solution. Help, anyone? Some special ipad case/screen sticker? Some screen technology I'm unaware of?
- mtgx 14y ago
  LCD's are still very reflective in sunlight. Only E-ink or PixelQi displays are really good in sunlight, but you lose colors. There was the Notion Ink Adam tablet. Not sure if they are still making new ones.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    Matte LCDs (like the outdoor HP and Lenovo screens) are much less reflective than others, although they can't do direct sunlight. eInk in all its variants (including PixelQi) is out of the question for my use, as I need to display a live video feed as part of the application. There's no technical problem to make sunlight readable LCDs - the technique behind the 3M "privacy screens" would work perfectly for that. In fact, I would have been able to use those privacy screens against sunlight, if they weren't embedded in glossy film :( The market apparently does not exist - the only sunlight readable LCDs one can find come with super-hardened computers that can swim in water and withstand falling from the 6th floor. They cost $3,000 or so, and have a Core 1 Duo, if you are lucky.
someotheruser 14y ago
TL;DR: Both. Pointing your finger at someone doing something worse doesn't make what you're doing right.
forgotAgain 14y ago
Love the first graphic and how it twists itself to show the recovery partition on the right side of the graph so the green bar can be as far left as possible. The article lost all credibility at that point.
- ygra 14y ago
  The recovery partition is likely at the end of the drive, which means it can easily be deleted and the other partition appropriately extended.
  - forgotAgain 14y ago
    Possibly, but I think the more likely explanation is that they are obfuscating the fact that the green bar for the Mac 128 is significantly longer than the bar for the Surface 128.
S_A_P 14y ago
The difference is in expectations. The Surface Pro may be slightly immune to that, but when someone buys a tablet, they are buying a media consumption device, so that they can download and read/watch/listen to files at their leisure. There is little file system access, and it is largely abstracted away. A PC is a general purpose device with full access to the file system and the ability to do much more than a traditional tablet. If the surface is a touchscreen laptop it should be marketed as such. I cant believe that we are all having the discussion around what a megabyte or multiple thereof is. PCs smartphones and electronics have always been so specific as to their tech specs I dont understand who decided it would be a good idea to have a conversion factor between megabyte and a "million" bytes. At the end of the day, however, its just tech press and people with too much time on their hands complaining about a small aspect of a device. Articles like this make me grumpy...

318 points by CrankyBear 14y ago

The Ars review of the Surface Pro has more details on disk space: Unlike Office in Windows RT, this Office is fully uninstallable if you don't like it. Doing so will liberate about 2.3 GB of disk space. Even if you keep Office, you'll have more disk space than Microsoft claims. How much? The 128 GB Surface Pro has a formatted capacity of 119 (binary) GB and change. A total of 8.4 GB is used for recovery data, of which 7.8 GB can be reclaimed if you prefer to keep your recovery image on external media. This leaves 110.5 GB for the main partition. On a brand new Surface Pro, about 89 (binary) GB are available. Occupying that 20 GB are 3.3 GB of hibernation file, 4 GB of pagefile, 2.3 GB of Office 2013, 10.4 GB of Windows, built-in/default apps, and so on and so forth. Presuming the sizes of the applications remain comparable on the 64 GB model (with its 59 binary, GB formatted capacity) one would expect to see about 29 GB available by default. Take off Office and the recovery partition and there will be close to 40 GB available.

stcredzero 14y ago
7.8 GB recoverable recovery 3.3 GM hibernation file 4.0 GB pagefile 2.3 GB Office 10.4 GB Windows + other default apps --------- 27.8 GB Which seems to indicate that you can recover 27.8 - 10.4 GB, or 17.4 GB. I'd like to see a chart like that for the Air. The comparison in the article is with the Macbook Air, which is a laptop, not a laptop/tablet hybrid. I think this is instructive, however. My understanding is that there is no hibernation file and pagefile on an iPad. It's not trying to be a laptop. Likewise, there is no recovery partition on the iPad. (And I see very little need of one.) The Surface Pro is a laptop in a tablet format. It's basically an old stylus tablet PC from the early 2000's done with 2012 technology, capacitative touch, and some design ideas from iPad style tablets layered on top. Like my old tc1100 stylus tablet PC, you can use it for the same use cases as an iPad. However, there are important differences: Holding it in bed would be a bit of a stunt. I can do it with my tc1100 if I rest my elbow on the bed and balance the thing along its diagonal through the center of gravity, with the corner resting firmly in my palm, whereas holding the iPad is like holding a book: something I don't have to think too much about. (That said, the iPad is already at the upper limit of what's tenable for me to not notice weight wise.) Like the old tc1100, I have to be mindful of vents. A total non-issue with the iPad. I don't know what term there would be for this quality, but it's like a magic slab of touchable light. Having to think about vents ruins that. Like the old tc1100, I would have to be mindful of battery per work session. To give credit where credit is due, the battery on the Surface Pro lasts 2X as long. However, I can put the tc1100 to sleep and hot-swap battery, so one extra battery gives me as much work endurance. Basically, they're missing three of the essential qualities that make the iPad great as a tablet. I think they would've done better to go whole hog on the tablet/laptop hybrid idea like the IdeaPad Yoga and the Inspiron Duo. By pretending to be a tablet, they're setting up a bunch of expectations that aren't gong to be met. The tablet/hybrid is good enough for occasionally folding up as a tablet and passing around at a meeting, and doesn't seem to carry expectations beyond that. Also, what benefit is there to be had from a tablet/laptop hybrid that I couldn't get from an "ultrabook" laptop with an 8.9" tablet? Instead of one device that's mediocre as a tablet and a laptop, I could have two devices that are great in each situation, for little additional weight. (For one thing, I could use the hybrid with a Wacom digitizer to do double duty as a poor-man's Cintiq, but that's kind of niche.)
- Indyan 14y ago
  You can't just chop off the page file. Disabling it entirely or reducing it significantly can and will affect system performance.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    That shouldn't be the case. So many linux machines are doing fine with swap disabled. Regardless, there's no reason for hibernation and page file to be different. They can (and should) be the same file.
    - ygra 14y ago
      Oh? So where do you put swapped-out pages when you go into hibernation? Or would you first need to defragment your page file contents just to dump RAM contents into it? Or keep a map what pages in the pagefile are swapped out and what are just hibernated RAM and then piece stuff together on wake-up again?
      - hackmiester 14y ago
        Linux can write the suspend-to-disk data to the swap partition, and this comment really made me wonder how...
      - richardwhiuk 14y ago
        You simply swap out all your memory. There's no technical difference between a hibernated page and a swapped out page - the only difference is that the OS normally prevents certain pages (e.g. kernel pages) from being swapped out to preserve performance.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Your argument is seriously "Windows should be Linux"?
      - stcredzero 14y ago

jedmeyers 14y ago

I am curious if the author checked out what's that thing called GiB is before he started ranting about Microsoft vs. Apple disk size discrepancies?

kitsune_ 14y ago
The guy isn't ranting. The article is matter-of-fact in tone. The mebi-/gibi-/...-byte (metric) definition was standardized rather late (late 90's). By that time the general public was already accustomed to the (now wrong) binary interpretation of a MB or GB. Also of note: The GB was actually once defined by the IEEE as 1024^3 bytes.
- mbreese 14y ago
  The entire thing read like a rant to me... I don't read him all that often though, so I don't know if that is his normal style.
  - scholia 14y ago
    "Rant" means "to speak or declaim extravagantly or violently; talk in a wild or vehement way; rave" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rant http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rant So either you don't know what a rant is, or you don't understand English very well.
- jedmeyers 14y ago
  __WAS__ defined. How is it defined now by the IEEE?
- nessus42 14y ago
  For better or worse, disk manufacturers have been using base 10 megabytes and gigabytes for a couple of decades now. Sure, that switch was marketing driven, but criticizing Apple for eventually switching to the same nomenclature universally used by the storage industry qualifies as a "rant" in my book. If Apple started doing that for RAM, which is still universally quantified using base 2 gigabytes, now that would be rant-worthy.

beagle3 14y ago

tl;dr: On the 128GB models (Surface Pro vs. Macbook Air), they both leave ~90GB free space. The problem for Microsoft is that they are competing at the same time against laptops and tablets. For someone who's looking for a tablet, it loses badly to an iPad (the free space sticks out, but it is by now means the only place an iPad wins). For someone who's looking for a laptop, it loses to many laptops (in price, performance, ergonomics - whatever it is you care about, there's something that handily beats the Surface Pro). Are there any people who are looking for something that's sort-of-a-tablet and sort-of-a-laptop, and are willing to get a device that is not competitive as either? We'll soon find out. My own experience leads me to believe that until you have perfected a niche (neither laptops or tablets are there yet), extreme specialization always wins against generalization.

cooldeal 14y ago
>For someone who's looking for a laptop, it loses to many laptops (in price, performance, ergonomics - whatever it is you care about, there's something that handily beats the Surface Pro Is there an ultrabook laptop with a 1080p touchscreen, an active digitizer with a stylus, atleast Core i5 for $1000 to $1100 ? I am not being facetious here, I am looking to buy something to replace my 6 year old laptop so looking for real suggestions here.
- acchow 14y ago
  Asus Zenbook Prime. $999 at B&H. 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U, 4GB, 128GB SSD, 13" 1080p screen. Edit: Oops, didn't notice the digitizer requirement. Please disregard.
  - mens_rea 14y ago
    Nope. No Digitizer. Thanks for playing.
  - replax 14y ago
    Unfortunately does not have a wacom digitiser nor touch screen...
- 14y ago

DannoHung 14y ago

The numbers reported for the 128 version weren't what people were griping about.

grecy 14y ago

> And with one minor tweak that doesn’t affect the system’s capabilities in any way If that were the case, why would that feature even be included? Obviously it does impact the capabilities, when things go wrong. Also interesting to note they call it a "minor tweak". What percentage of tablet (or laptop) users even know about a recovery image? I small fraction, I'd wager.

timdorr 14y ago
They're referring to the recovery partition. And while most of the time you're never going to need such a thing, when you're dealing with a device like the Surface it's going to come in very handy when you do.
- dmboyd 14y ago
  This is just a personal anecdote , but I've had a large number of Dell laptops (100+) which all seem to have recovery partitions rather than install media now days. Whenever something fails, it's been a hard drive hardware failure, In which case the recovery partition is completely useless. I have never used a recovery partition successfully.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    The fact that you have such a large number of laptops in your possession suggests to me that you're probably in a corporate IT setting (apologies if I'm wrong). In such a case, Hardware failures are probably going to be the most prevalent mode of failure for needing a system re-image, since software usage is going to be in-line with corporate policies. People aren't going to venture into warez sites, etc. But for the average, non-technical user, I think you'd see a much higher incidence of needing a system re-image due to viruses, malware, spyware, etc.
    - drakeandrews 14y ago
      But then the average user is likely to take it to any number of computer repair shops who might try the recovery partition, or they might just reimage from an OEM install disk they have lying around/available.

callahad 14y ago

This is frustrating. The Surface Pro has a 128 GB option and goes down from there to 64 GB. The Macbook Air has a 128 GB option and goes up from there to 512 GB. Edit: this is factually incorrect. There is also a 64 GB MacBook Air model on offer; I forgot about it. I apologize. ~90 GB of free space on both 128 GB models seems reasonable. Stepping down to just ~26 GB free on the 64 GB model seems unreasonable: the usable capacity is less than half of the advertised capacity. I feel similarly about the recovery partition discussion. If you remove the recovery image, I presume you will not be able to recover the Surface Pro without additional media. The Macbook Air, on the other hand, will allow you to do a fresh re-installation of OS X over the Internet with a completely blank disk: it's baked into the firmware. Therefore, removing the recovery image results in a feature disparity between the systems. Grumble.

mxxx 14y ago
Agreed, it's a bit of a straw man. It's certainly an issue that hard drive capacity is advertised as being higher than it actually is (and that BS apple is pulling is inexcusable), but the actual issue people were taking with the Surface is the fact that when you buy it it's packed so full of bloat and crapware that half the useable disk space is already depleted on a 64gb model.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >but the actual issue people were taking with the Surface is the fact that when you buy it it's packed so full of bloat and crapware What bloat and crapware are you talking about? Office? If the 128GB MBA is taking up similar space, does it mean that it too comes with "bloat and crapware" ?
- soperj 14y ago
  Pretty sure a bunch of that used space is actually just a recovery partition that you can get rid of if you want to.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    You shouldn't have to tweak a consumer device fresh out of the box. Heck, I program on my MBA and literally the only thing I've done is let it run Software Update when it asks me, change the wallpaper, and dial up the trackpad speed.

incongruity 14y ago

I think part of this comes from the abstractions used for tablets vs. "traditional" computers. (With the surface being viewed as a tablet by most consumers, vs. the air being seen as a traditional laptop). In tablets, the trend seems to be to abstract away/hide the OS as much as possible – it isn't something that runs on the machine, it is the machine – if that makes sense. Compare this to the laptop world where we're all engrained to conceive of the OS as something that is installed on the machine and in most/all cases is able to be swapped out (insert plug for your favorite Linux distro here, etc.) So, given that, most consumers willingly accept the space the OS takes up as a given on the laptop yet the same people see the listing the tablet storage including the space required for the OS as disingenuous. When you want to abstract away something, if your abstraction leaks, it usually hampers the user experience or user perception of the offering – as this case illustrates (IMHO).

barista 14y ago
Actually for Microsoft a tablet was always a fully capable computer. It's apple who came up with a big iPod touch and started calling it a tablet.
- incongruity 14y ago
  Yes, but how do consumers see it? It's framed as competing with the iPad - and most see it as a tablet, I'd wager.
  - scholia 14y ago
    The Surface RT is a tablet (that also happens to run Microsoft Office). The Surface Pro is a PC (that also happens to work as a tablet). I can understand consumers being confused (though I have no evidence that they are) but surely it's not too hard for HN readers to understand...

wtallis 14y ago

The author wrongly dismisses the impact of the SSD's spare area on usable storage: > "The parts about wear-leveling blacks and bad blocks are just part of how SSDs work. On a new SSD these numbers should be very small." This is absolutely wrong. Modern SSDs reserve a significant part of their NAND even when new. For example, the Micron C400 used in the Surface Pro has 128GiB of NAND and reserves 6.8% as spare area, and thus presents to the OS as a 119.2GiB block device. An Intel SSD 525 with the same 128GiB of NAND reserves 12.6% spare area, so it presents 111.8GiB to the OS. The author's MacBook Air seems to have about 11.7% spare area. They're still fundamentally the same amount of storage, but drives with smaller spare area will generally perform worse when they are nearly full, and having less spare area can also reduce the longevity of the drive.

wmf 14y ago
There's still a problem where Apple appears to be advertising a 120 GB SSD as 128 GB.
- wtallis 14y ago
  All SSDs advertised as either 128GB or 120GB come with exactly 128GiB of total NAND, with 5-15% reserved as spare area. If the spare area is chosen to be 6.87%, then that exactly accounts for the difference between a binary gigabyte (GiB) and decimal gigabyte, so a 128GiB SSD can have exactly 128 decimal GB of usable space.
  - wmf 14y ago
    But Apple's SSD doesn't have 128 GB of usable space; it has 121 GB. Other companies that advertise 128 GB give you 128 GB of usable space.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
I am confused, does the Surface Pro come with a 128GiB HDD or a 119GiB HDD? I was of the impression that it was 128GB i.e 119GiB.

Dylan16807 14y ago

This is ridiculous. The complaint was always about the 64GB model. 75% is fine. 35% is not. Very simple.

barista 14y ago
and 64 GB MBA has the same problem.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  Does it? A cursory google suggests that the 64GB MBA also comes with the drive about 70-75% free.

rickdale 14y ago

I recently purchased a 4TB external hard drive. It was the first hard drive I have ever come across that had exactly 4tb of free space when I opened it. Usually its a little bit less. I can remember my 80gig hard drive I spent all summer saving up for back around 2000 only have 66gigs and being totally bummed out. I know with flash memory the units are more exact, but are they getting better with the spinning hd's with the space accuracy?

janus 14y ago
Do you have a mac? OS x reports free space differently since the last few versions
callahad 14y ago
> are they getting better with the spinning hd's with the space accuracy? It's not so much a question of accuracy as it is one of units. Storage manufacturers have typically used GB, software has typically used GiB, labeled as "GB." 1 GB = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes 1 GiB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes Which is why your 80,000,000,000 byte HD is 80 GB on the box but 74.5 GiB when plugged in. OS X 10.6 decided to harmonize the two: it reports size in terms of GB (10^9), abandoning GiB (2^30), meaning what you see on the box finally matches what you see in software. The downside is that your files appear larger than you may be used to, since that "1.00 GB" (GiB) file is now being reported as "1.07 GB."

adnrw 14y ago

> Microsoft has been pummeled by critics this week over supposedly inadequate storage space in its new Surface Pro. It wasn't about the inadequacy of the storage space in and of itself – 25/64GB or 90/128GB is not decidedly inadequate for all users, and is (as the article explains) in the ballpark of usable space for comparable laptops. There's a separate issue regarding the advertising of storage industry-wide that has merit, but this issue is about the amount of usable storage space in the context of the rest of the tablet market. Sure, the Surface is comparable on storage space to competing laptops including those offered by Apple, but it's not even in the same ballpark as competing tablets. Microsoft is pitching the Surface as a competitor to both tablets and laptops, separately and together. It therefore needs to compete against features of both, and it seems it can't when it comes to this specific feature.

r00fus 14y ago
Even the 64GB MB Air gives you more room than the Surface Pro 64GB. About 10GB more. That's 33% more usable space. It's not clear that MS should have released the 64GB model for Surface Pro - too much overhead just looks poorly designed.

comex 14y ago

Note that the OS X recovery partition is only 650 MB, since it downloads the actual installation image from the internet on the fly. Are you sure that the Surface Pro's disk actually offers 127.90 GB of block device? To my inexpert ears, that seems to imply that it's actually larger than 128 GB, which sounds wrong.

rbn 14y ago

This is for people who want tablet + laptop but dont want carry+charge+pay for 2 devices. It's really not that difficult to understand, I dont know why HN has such a hard time understanding this. "But the iPad is a better tablet!!!", yeh but the surface is a full system. "But the air is better laptop!!" yeh but the surface has tablet capabilities. "Buy an Air + iPad!!" I dont want to pay extra plus its a hassle to carry + manage 2 devices

rayiner 14y ago
I don't think HN has a hard time understanding it, they just think it's not going to be a successful product. Device consolidation is always tricky, but for it to be really successful the integrated device has to be "good enough" in both areas. E.g. people don't buy consumer digital cameras anymore because cell phone cameras are perfectly serviceable. Is the Surface Pro a "good enough" laptop? I'd argue no, not with the keyboard/trackpad situation and lack of a rigid connecting hinge. Ars's review noted as much. As it a "good enough" tablet? I'd argue no, not with the weight, heat, and short battery life. Now, obviously "good enough" is in the eye of the beholder. When people rag on Surface Pro, the thinking is that it's not going to be "good enough" in both roles for the majority of customers, and as such isn't going to sell. The situation is complicated by the fact that the unit is priced at more serious users, those who can't get away with an iPad + keyboard attachment by itself. Those users are more likely to see the keyboard/trackpad issue as a deal breaker for serious work. Less serious users, who don't need the extra capability, have no reason to look at it over an iPad. Also, don't forget about how 7" tablets factor into the equation, because they make it more practical to carry a laptop + tablet. An 11.6" MBA + iPad Mini 16GB will run you $1330 versus about $1030 for 64GB for the Surface, and weigh in at around a pound heavier. But, in return you get more combined screen real estate, more combined storage, and triple the combined battery life.
- edtechdev 14y ago
  Also, there is choice. There is the Asus Transformer Book coming out, which is perhaps even more powerful (i7) and has a dockable keyboard with extra battery. Or if you want something not as powerful but lighter weight, without a noisy fan, and much better battery life, there is the Asus Vivotab TF810C out now, or the Samsung ATIV Smart PC, although they have the clovertrail atom processor which looks like may not allow installing Linux.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Interesting he mentions removing the Windows recovery partition, but not the ML one which is hardly top secret knowledge. Apple is no better, but none of the other manufacturers are. Storage space is one of those wonderful facts which turn out not to be as factual they could be.

X-Istence 14y ago
Apple has at least taken up using the manufacturer advertised figures instead of using the real size. So a 1TB drive in Mac OS X looks like it can store 1 TB of data. If you were to download 1 TiB of data from the internet you'd find that your 1 TB disk is a little small ;-).

mattbee 14y ago

Wow, and I thought Disk Utility was only a piece of shit for hiding partitions from me :-) We've had at least one dispute with a customer who didn't get the "advertised" storage space when buying hosting - it's easy to you say this server has 8 x 500GB drives in a RAID10, but we've had a customer unhappy when 1.9 binary terabytes of data didn't fit onto that after RAID metadata, filesystem overhead etc. So the new product (bigv.io) expresses storage and RAM in binary gigabytes, and I'm thinking I might convert all the dedicated server storage specifications away from lying drive manufacturer sizes, even if that means advertising a 465GiB disc. (or should we advertise size after ext3 overhead arrrggghh).

klodolph 14y ago
I hope you stick with the decimal units, because it means that if I have 8 x 500 GB drives, that's 4 GB. If I have 8 x 500 GiB, then I have 3.90625 TiB, which I need a calculator for. Frustrating and annoying. Stick with metric, it's easier on us humans.

ari_elle 14y ago

Nitpick (and most likely even considered OT): - Mac OS shows storage space the right way, because it shows capacity in KB/GB (which is base 10 by definition) - Windows OS shows storage space the wrong way, because while using base 2, it still claims to show you space in KB,GB (but actually it's GiB) To what is generally better: Well for the common user GB might make more sense, since every storage device is marketed with GB in mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes And people who feel cheated because of less storage space seem to ignore the fact that this tablet is running a full Windows Operating system. I guess it's just the mindset of many to think of tablets as "big smartphones" instead of compact full-fledged computers.

curiousdannii 14y ago
When did the redefining of a KB from 1024 bytes to 1000 bytes happen? And has it truly happened? If you get 2GB RAM don't you get 2048 MB, not 2000 MB? I've always thought it was just the harddrive manufacturers being stingy, claiming their drives had more than they actually did.
- Uchikoma 14y ago
  The switch - although not in my head - came when more people got computers, cameras and iPods, being exposed to storage compared to computers, where they didn't care or know. People care about storage since the store large amounts of mp3 and images. 1000KB = 1GB, 1000GB = 1TB is easier for most people than 1024KiB = 1GiB, 1024Gib = 1TiB.
  - scholia 14y ago
    Manufactures do it because bigger numbers sell better than smaller ones. Which works fine until people create or download a few files and find they have been conned: they don't have as much usable space as they thought they'd paid for.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  The redefining went the other way. Under the conventions of metric prefixes, k has always meant 1000, not 1024. It was only in the computer industry that k was bastardized to mean 1024, and once enough people realized it was wrong, they created the ki prefix to indicate the 10th power of 2.

bdcravens 14y ago

Desktops and laptops have already reported drive capacity like this: total capacity before OS + apps. Tablets and smart phones, as they've existed in the marketplace since 2007, advertise available space. Most people think of the Surface as the Windows version of an iPad, not a new form factor for a traditional laptop. As such, they need to be marketed like their cohorts.

gabriel34 14y ago

This is a bought arcticle if I ever saw one. Two wrongs don't make one right.

scholia 14y ago
You're a jerk if ever I saw one.

rjempson 14y ago

The fact this conversation is taking place is very droll. Articles are being written, comments and forums are running hot just because so many people are effectively saying "How dare someone say that my favourite vendor's computer has less disk space than another (obviously inferior) vendor"

mmcconnell1618 14y ago
Isn't anyone just happy to not have a spinning platter of metal in their laptop? There has always been a difference between unformatted and formatted space on disks. Look at an old box of 1.44MB floppy disks and you'll clearly see that formatted space and unformatted space are reported separately. The same thing goes for hard drives. What file system you put on the HD can make a difference too. There will always be somewhat less space than the full raw capacity. In this case the problem appears to be shipping large pre-installed software and OS on a smallish SSD. Five years from now when higher capacity is cheaper, no one will even care.

el_cuadrado 14y ago

I think the author is missing a point here: Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet. I am ok with 'wasted' space on a computer, because first, I expect OS to have a substantial footprint, and second - I can see, touch, and actually 'consume' the OS files. I am not ok with wasted space on a tablet, because to me it is a glorified book reader/mp3 player; I expect to use all the available space for storage. Wait, you are saying Surface is actually a computer (although a shitty one), not a tablet? Well, then MSFT completely failed to communicate this message. Which is pretty regular problem for MSFT.

pycassa 14y ago
define "full-blown computer"
kooshball 14y ago
> Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet. You are wrong. The Surface Pro, which is what we're talking about here, is a full-blown computer just like the MBA. It can run VMs as well. Or any other software you can run on a windows laptop.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Is the disk in the surface interchangeable (without performing a surgical procedure)? What about the MBA?

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Yadda yadda yadda, doesn't matter. When people buy a laptop they expect the OS will take up a good chunk of the storage space. When people buy a tablet they don't have that expectation. More importantly, when the free space is significantly less than half the advertized storage and there is no warning that's the case people are going to be surprized and upset, and rightfully so. In a Macbook Air the worst you get is a reduction to about 70-75% of the listed storage capacity (in the 128 or 64 gb models), which is annoying but not crazy. In the Surface Pro 64 model you are reduced to about 1/3 of the initial capacity, which is ridiculous and definitely deserves some sort of warning on the packaging, I would think. Expecting a reduction by 1/4 is reasonable common sense, experiencing a reduction by 2/3 is surprising.

jimktrains2 14y ago
>When people buy a laoptop they expect the OS will take up a good chunk of the storage space.[sic] Why? My linux install has a full dev environment and office suite and doesn't take a ton of room.
- mikeash 14y ago
  People's expectations aren't based on your Linux install.
  - jimktrains2 14y ago
    I just meant there is no reason the OS needs to be so large.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Certainly, but the OSes that people typically encounter are, so they expect that because it's what they see.
      - gcr 14y ago
        Isn't that a problem that we should address? Users expect their office suites to crash, but that doesn't mean that we as developers shouldn't be constantly trying to improve our code.

Tloewald 14y ago

So having "proven" Windows 8 has no advertising (by somehow claiming the apps with ads weren't really part of Windows 8) Ed Bott turns to proving the 128GB Surface has more storage space than the Macbook Air by deleting tons of stuff from the Surface and nearly freeing up as much space as the latter has by default.

stephengillie 14y ago

This is stupid. This is like asking which car cabin has the most air volume, and finding that Toyota's larger seats mean its cabin can't hold as much air as Honda's.

merinid 14y ago

who cares about storage space when you can keep everything in the cloud. my computer is as commodity as my jeans, friends. Access over dependence.

rjempson 14y ago
your friends are a commodity. now that's really nice :-)
- merinid 14y ago
  No no, my jeans are the commodity. Friends is just who i was addressing that sentence too. Read into the comma. Lol.

nakovet 14y ago

Basically the article says: Microsoft lies to you, Apple lies to you and basically everyone is lying to you when it comes to store in hard drives, pen drives, SSD, etc. At least our bandwidth limitations follow the base we are expecting too, can you imagine you have 100 GB / monthly but for real is 9X something? The industry is laughing on us.

justinhj 14y ago

One differentiator is that Macs come with iLife suite that are a pretty extensive and popular addition, whereas windows comes with office which is easily replaced for most people with free and/or cloud offerings.

jeswin 14y ago
I don't use a Mac or Windows. But I suspect that in the real world, Office is way more "extensive and popular" than iLife.
- justinhj 14y ago
  Well most of the people I know in the real world that are casual home computer users get a lot more use out of apps like iPhoto and iMovie than word. Especially because most of them just use Google docs for writing letters.
jordanthoms 14y ago
... Did you really just argue that iLife is more valuable than office? Now I have truly seen everything.
- justinhj 14y ago
  No I didn't argue. It's just my perspective.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

Why is this being compared to the macbook air and not the ipad?

bhauer 14y ago
Because people like myself cross-shop the Surface Pro against compact ultrabook-class laptops. I have opted to go with Surface Pro because of the added flexibility of its design versus this group I consider to be its competition. I did not cross-shop with iPad and Nexus 10.
NZ_Matt 14y ago
Because the Surface Pro's specs match or surpass? a macbook air. It just so happens that it's a PC in a tablet hybrid form factor.
silix 14y ago
Because the Surface PRO runs full desktop Photoshop, Visual Studio, Office, Hyper-v and Skrim. You can also plug in a full USB keyboard and mouse (the OS supports a pointer), use a digitizer pen or an XBox controller.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

I'm so embarrassed. A week ago I defended that people could be reasonable about Microsoft, their products and the Surface. The comment threads here today have been pathetic. If this is the biggest issue to bitch about regarding the Surface then the Surface Pro 2.0 should be an easy target to nail. Jesus there are people writing rants in this thread that don't even understand that the Surface Pro is specd similarly to the macbook air (except the surface has a much better screen)

Uchikoma 14y ago

Wow, such a long article, about essentially nothing. About the 2 or 10 base, yes I think it's stupid (living 30yrs with the 2 base) but thats the way it is. MS reports GiB and Apple report GB, so it's wrong to claim both Apple and MS report their capacity in GB. "The measurements are just expressed differently, in a way that makes Apple look generous and Microsoft look stingy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

JuDue 14y ago

Everything comes back to Balmer's disdain for the iPad as being an overpriced netbook device that nobody will ever use. MS is furiously trying to merge tablets into fully fledged PCs. I can almost guarantee that by Windows 9 they will have some success with this, and hardware will get better and better. But that's not to say the tablet space doesn't have enormous potential as reduced and simplified user experiences. Microsoft is betting a lot of its chips on pushing full Windows onto smaller devices. One key detail is that Office 365 seems to completely misjudge expectations of tablet computing.

bad_user 14y ago

I've got a Thinkpad on which I replaced the hard-disk with a 128 GB SSD and installed Ubuntu on it (using fulldisk encryption with dm-crypt / LUKS). I've got about 100 GB of usable space after having installed a shit ton of apps, libraries and utilities I needed, stuff like Emacs, OpenJDK (with sources), IntelliJ IDEA, RVM with dozens of Java/Scala libraries downloaded through Maven/SBT, dozens of ruby gems, dozens of Python libraries, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Memcached, Gimp, Dropbox, GCC, many header/dev packages, some games and the list can go on. I should mention that I'm not using a Swap, because I've got enough RAM and as long as I've got Suspend, I don't care about Hibernation. But I'm talking about Ubuntu 12.10, which is probably the most bloated Linux distribution I ever used. What the hell is in Windows or OS X that takes so much space?

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
Backwards compatibility. My Windows 8 Pro is 19.2 GiB (on disk). Of which 9.67 GiB is WinSxS. Which is essentially a giant component library containing dozens of different versions of DLLs third party programs use. 1.67 GiB is the driver store. 1.36 GiB is the 32 bit sub-system (SysWoW64). 700 MiB is the .Net framework (versions 1 through 4). So now we're down to 5.94 GiB of "stuff" which we can call the "OS" if you'd like, without any compatibility bits. Linux is so tiny because Linux has a terrible backwards compatibility record. Fortunately this is hard to spot because the distro's do such a great job of hiding it (and automate much of that via their respective package managers). But if Linux DID care about backwards compatibility at every level then the OS would be huge too, since you'd need tons of old libraries built in, tons of drivers for redundant hardware, and gunk like that.

_debug_ 14y ago

Again, the top comment on an HN thread involving Apple is one that supports Apple by digging up some "fact" or the other that makes Apple look OK. This has always been this ridiculous. At least AAPL investors are pricing in a future loss of earnings as everyone except the hardcore fanboys move to more open platforms that are priced at 75% to 50% of Apple products and allow you to plug in USB and play along well with other manufacturer's hardware by implementing open protocols like DLNA. Anecdote : I bought an LG TV and discovered without doing any additional setup, my Samsung phone now shows a TV icon on the photos, and when I clicked it, I was surprised to find the photo pop up on the TV. As I swipe my finger on the phone, the photos scroll on the TV. Voila! I honestly don't know whether this is some kind of PnP broadcast, DLNA, WiDi, or what! Next : my HP laptop has an Intel WiDi app on it and the TV has a "Wifi Screen Share". Hmm, let's see...bang! Laptop screen now wirelessly mirrored on the TV. LG TV, Samsung phone, HP laptop. I bet Apple products would not work with anything other than Apple this way.

bjustin 14y ago
Yep, just like everyone moved from iPods to other MP3 players that show up as removable storage.

beagle3 14y ago

This thread seems to be full of good advice about laptops, so maybe I can get help on something slightly unrelated: Anyone have recommendation for a tablet (or laptop that converts to tablet) that has outdoor readable screen? Not direct sun, but sitting-in-the-car-on-a-sunny-day readable. So far, HP EliteBook with its "outdoor readable screen" option (extra $100 and 2 week wait) is the best I've found, and it's not very good. Lenovo's outdoor readable screen comes close, but is not as good. I'm sure this is a solved problem - but I can't find a decent solution. Help, anyone? Some special ipad case/screen sticker? Some screen technology I'm unaware of?

mtgx 14y ago
LCD's are still very reflective in sunlight. Only E-ink or PixelQi displays are really good in sunlight, but you lose colors. There was the Notion Ink Adam tablet. Not sure if they are still making new ones.
- beagle3 14y ago
  Matte LCDs (like the outdoor HP and Lenovo screens) are much less reflective than others, although they can't do direct sunlight. eInk in all its variants (including PixelQi) is out of the question for my use, as I need to display a live video feed as part of the application. There's no technical problem to make sunlight readable LCDs - the technique behind the 3M "privacy screens" would work perfectly for that. In fact, I would have been able to use those privacy screens against sunlight, if they weren't embedded in glossy film :( The market apparently does not exist - the only sunlight readable LCDs one can find come with super-hardened computers that can swim in water and withstand falling from the 6th floor. They cost $3,000 or so, and have a Core 1 Duo, if you are lucky.

someotheruser 14y ago

TL;DR: Both. Pointing your finger at someone doing something worse doesn't make what you're doing right.

forgotAgain 14y ago

Love the first graphic and how it twists itself to show the recovery partition on the right side of the graph so the green bar can be as far left as possible. The article lost all credibility at that point.

ygra 14y ago
The recovery partition is likely at the end of the drive, which means it can easily be deleted and the other partition appropriately extended.
- forgotAgain 14y ago
  Possibly, but I think the more likely explanation is that they are obfuscating the fact that the green bar for the Mac 128 is significantly longer than the bar for the Surface 128.

S_A_P 14y ago

The difference is in expectations. The Surface Pro may be slightly immune to that, but when someone buys a tablet, they are buying a media consumption device, so that they can download and read/watch/listen to files at their leisure. There is little file system access, and it is largely abstracted away. A PC is a general purpose device with full access to the file system and the ability to do much more than a traditional tablet. If the surface is a touchscreen laptop it should be marketed as such. I cant believe that we are all having the discussion around what a megabyte or multiple thereof is. PCs smartphones and electronics have always been so specific as to their tech specs I dont understand who decided it would be a good idea to have a conversion factor between megabyte and a "million" bytes. At the end of the day, however, its just tech press and people with too much time on their hands complaining about a small aspect of a device. Articles like this make me grumpy...