Microsoft clarifies Surface Pro user-available storage capacities
With the Surface Pro tablet from Microsoft about to adorn store shelves, the Redmond giant has spoken up about the storage scenario on the upcoming slate.
Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet is slated for a February 9 launch and in order to avoid any more debates involving storage space, Microsoft has clarified first-hand the amount of actual storage that will be available to the end user on these machines.
Microsoft has announced that the 128GB version of the Surface Pro tablet will offer 83GB of free storage that will be user accessible while the 64GB version will only give 23GB of free space. It looks like Windows 8 installation coupled up with the bundled apps eats up a whopping 41GB of hard drive space. Microsoft says users will be able to free up additional storage space by “creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition,” but out of the box they’ll be left with as little as 36 percent of the advertised storage available.
This sounds very similar to what happened with the Surface RT tablet, with the actual space available to the user being very different from the advertised capacity. Andrew Sokolowski, a California based lawyer took the Redmond giant to court for misleading consumers with the advertised space on the RT tablets.
It looks like Microsoft is taking the safer approach this time around with the Surface Pro tablets, by declaring the actual capacity available to the user before the launch. Microsoft also says that with the USB port, the user will have the ability to expand the storage capacity of the Surface Pro to their liking.
The Surface Pro tablet from Microsoft hits US stores on February 9, and will cost $899 for the 64GB version and the 128GB version will cost $999.