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Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by pwthornton on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:20PM (#5136740)
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.

Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by ChuckMcM on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:27PM (#5136788)
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.

Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by eclipxe on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:10PM (#5137029)
@hackinthebochs

Of course it runs office. And with VMWare or VirtualBox or Parallels...every badly written legacy app is alive and well.

Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by lh7777 on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:42PM (#5137389)
Yep, although you may have trouble fitting all of that on a 64 GB Air.
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by hackinthebochs on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:06PM (#5137004)
Does it run Office, and every other badly written legacy app from the last 20 years? If not, then its not a "better deal" in most people's minds.
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by BHSPitMonkey on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:00PM (#5137237)
You can run Office on a Surface iff you have enough free space to install it at all :)
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by illuminate on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:52PM (#5137428)
I believe there's so little free space because Office 2013 is preinstalled.
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by dangrossman on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @11:00PM (#5137989)
Not on the Surface Pro which this thread is about. Only the Surface RT comes with a pre-release version of Office.
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by illuminate on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @12:12PM (#5140467)
Ah, I see that there's a "recovery partition" on the Pro models.
Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by scholia on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @11:08PM (#5138015)
Except the MacBook Air is a much worse deal by not having a touch screen, by not having a digitizer pen, and by not including the equivalent of a free iPad.

You don't in fact get as much capability even if you buy both a MacBook Air and an iPad for much more money. Especially after you've paid for Parallels and a copy of Windows 7 as well ;-)

As for the people who haven't quite figured out that you can keep a lot of your files in the cloud (and create them using Microsoft Office in the cloud), the cheap solution to the "storage problem" is as simple as a microSD card and a bit of copying.

Yes,it would be much nicer to have a 512GB Flash drive built in, but very few people would be willing to pay the price.

Re:64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free by pwthornton on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:22PM (#5137318)
This is the thread that I was referring to: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=583324 reply