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Microsoft Surface Pro WTF


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I have been planning to get the new Microsoft Surface Pro when it comes out to replace my again Motion Computing slate tablet pc.  It seems to have a decent stylus digitizer (although not a Wacom digitizer) and it a good price.  However, I just saw this (from http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tablet-pcs/1297429/microsoft-admits-surface-pro-128gb-storage-limited-to-83gb).
 
"Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, which is due to launch with a headline-grabbing 128GB of storage space, will only have 83GB of room for users' files.
 
According to a statement from the company given to Softpedia, the 128GB Surface Pro device - ... - a chunk of its 128GB capacity is taken up by the operating system and pre-installed applications - leaving just 83GB of user-accessible space to store files."
 
WTF?  Are all Windows 8 computers like this?  What in the hell could possibly come pre-installed?
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^ According to MS, "System software uses significant storage space; your storage capacity will be less" so, yes, all Microsoft Surfaces are like that.

 

IIRC, some guy is suing MS for false advertisement (or something along that line) because his Surface only came with 16gb of free space instead of 32gb he was expecting.

Edited by Salt Peanuts
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The Microsoft Surface RT is targeted to those kind of people.  The pro however has an Intel Core i5 processor, includes a digitizer stylus and a real version of Window 8.  It is just like the tablet pcs of the last 10+ years except it is now lighter and cheaper than before.  If the digitizer is good enough, I imagine many graphics artists may use it.  I plan to use Adobe Illustrator, latex, etc. 

 

Good to know about disabling pagefile and hiberfile.  I might just put Linux on it and certainly wouldn't need them taking up space. 

 

I guess I don't really need the space as I can keep stuff in online storage, I was just amazed by how much was "pre-installed."  (My current tablet only has 60GB.)

Edited by shellylh
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I think the issue is because we think of Surface Pros (and to extent, RTs) as tablets instead of as full-blown computers. None of us would be annoyed if full-blown computers we bought had less space than the stated hard drive space (which they would since there'd be OS and other software already installed).

Edited by Salt Peanuts
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None of us would be annoyed if full-blown computers we bought had less space than the stated hard drive space ...

No, that's not true.  I mean, yes, it's true, but ( a ) that's not the point, it's not that we get annoyed that it's less, it's that we get annoyed that it's that much less -- I mean, 45 G out of 128 is a bit much, and I do complain that Windows (not just 7, but previous versions as well) is a resource hog every time I run into that issue on a Windows partition. 

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It is a full blown computer that's the point of the pro. That's why I compared it to an Air.

Which was my point about people *thinking* of it as tablets instead of full blown computers.

Even on Android Tablets the OS takes up significant space. I have no clue about Apple tablets.

On my iPad 4, it's got 57.2gb out of 64gb available. IIRC, an actual usable space on a 64gb storage is around 59.6gb, so about 2.4gb iOS already used up from the get go. Edited by Salt Peanuts
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No, that's not true.  I mean, yes, it's true, but ( a ) that's not the point, it's not that we get annoyed that it's less, it's that we get annoyed that it's that much less -- I mean, 45 G out of 128 is a bit much, and I do complain that Windows (not just 7, but previous versions as well) is a resource hog every time I run into that issue on a Windows partition. 

 

Precisely!!!

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I'd just wait for the inevitable Haswell version later this year.

But at any rate, it is annoying how huge Windows is, and how huge its' genenrally unnecessary page and hibernation files are by default.

I used to install Windows 7 -- now admittedly, it was onto VM's, not on actual hardware, so I don't know if the OS installation is smart enough to know it's being installed on a VM and leave stuff out -- but it was less than 10G.  So the mistake was installing a full-blown Windows 8 install instead of their tablet software, or making some sort of "pro" version of their tablet software, or not trimming out the fat -- I mean, I bet half of that is for fonts and foreign language versions of stuff.  And how many drivers do you need if you control the hardware?

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I used to install Windows 7 -- now admittedly, it was onto VM's, not on actual hardware, so I don't know if the OS installation is smart enough to know it's being installed on a VM and leave stuff out -- but it was less than 10G.  So the mistake was installing a full-blown Windows 8 install instead of their tablet software, or making some sort of "pro" version of their tablet software, or not trimming out the fat -- I mean, I bet half of that is for fonts and foreign language versions of stuff.  And how many drivers do you need if you control the hardware?

Yep, I've installed Windows7 onto a 16GB CF card, and had plenty of space to spare once the uncessary files were swept away. But the fact that Windows will default to chewing up 32GB of my SSD space, when installed onto a system with 16GB RAM, is rather annoying, not that it's not easily fixed. I just wish it was one MORE thing that had to be fixed. I'm getting to used to the (general) ease of Android.
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