Thank you. There is a strong HN bias in this discussion, as a lot of people are throwing their arms up and saying "of course! Software takes up memory!"

For me it's about average customer experience. An average customer with 50GB of music would likely purchase 64GB Surface without hesitation. Coming home and discovering it only fits half their collection crosses a (fuzzy) but very real line from acceptable loss to false advertising. They've made a large sacrifice they didn't know they were making when they purchased it.

If this actually was considered false advertising and manufacturers had to advertise usable space instead of HD space, wouldn't that encourage competition? Who cares if the numbers are ugly, I'd be able to evaluate storage as a metric for purchase much more honestly. If something has a 64GB hard drive and only 23GB are available, the number 64 means literally nothing to the average consumer.

It is a computer. It's sold as a computer. It runs REAL. WINDOWS. It is not an iPad.

When I buy a computer, the OS takes up some of the space, despite what size the storage lists.

MS disclosed this BEFORE anyone purchased the system.

Where's the complaint?

Maybe I'd buy it if Windows would be the only thing around..

But I'm comparing it to my system (Ubuntu). The kernel takes about 70 MB and the entire system (including LibreOffice, Firefox and a basic apps) fits on a CD (including live environment). That's about 700 MB.

With a full set of development tools and a good selection of applications I come to around 4 GB. That's a number I can comprehend.

Now Windows 7/8 comes into arena somewhere around 16-17 GB on a clean install. This includes the base system, a shell, some tiny utility apps and a Browser. End of list.

WTF?

> The kernel takes about 70 MB and the entire system (including LibreOffice, Firefox and a basic apps) fits on a CD (including live environment). That's about 700 MB.

Heavily compressed, yes. In actuality, it's more like 5GB, considering all the redundancy inherent in these sorts of binaries.

Regardless, Windows libraries alone come to 10GB (between system32, syswow64, and winsxs), because unlike an Ubuntu LiveCD, they aren't shipping just the libraries for the applications on the disc, but a massive, massive set of base APIs, various different versions, etc. This is the cost of legacy compatibility.

My complaint isn't aimed only at Microsoft for doing this, although this is the worst example I've seen. My complaint is that products are being marketed and sold using a false metric: hard drive space. iPads are sold this way, Android phones are sold this way, and yes, "real windows computers" are sold this way. The fact that you think it's important we're talking about a "real windows computer" in this case only reinforces my point that you're suffering the bias of someone who is well versed in technology.

Trying to persuade consumers with the capacity of the disk drive is meaningless, but to consumers it doesn't seem meaningless. Otherwise, why would they put it in such big print on the box?

Ultimately this only hurts Microsoft (and anyone else who does this) since it worsens some customer's experiences by giving them false expectations. It won't affect all customers and especially not the tech savvy here who are calling the layman stupid for not knowing the difference between "actual formatted capacity" and the number on the package, but real people none the less.

The complaint is that average users are not going to know or understand the difference between "real windows" and "ipad windows". It's also kind of pointless for a salesperson to attempt explaining this to the average user. The surface competes directly with the ipad. It contains an arm chip and probably can't run your old existing windows software.

To be clear, we're talking about the Surface Pro here -- the one that has an x86 chip and can run your old existing Windows software.

> It runs REAL. WINDOWS

Actually it doesn't. It runs some weird OS with a scrabble board of apps.