Condemning the Surface?

[DrCheese]

A lawyer is suing Microsoft for false advertising after his 32GB Surface slab turned up with 16GB of free space. What an idiot.

 

He has a point tho. It's already annoying how iOS devices hug a gb or so of the built in memory. Makes the 8gb versions practically useless for anything other than a few apps.

You could argue that desktop/laptops have been like this for years, i.e Windows & other apps takes up space on the advertised HDD, but you can uninstall all of those (even the OS) and regain that space. You're kinda stuck on the Surface & taking nearly half the advertised space really is taking it a bit too far.

[rich_tech]

from what I saw of an RT one of the support staff has the other day, it seems to be a nice enough device, though I wouldnt consider one without an x86 processor myself, the keyboard is quite impressive, I just cannot take to windows 8 at all though here, I have given it repeated tries and still find, that I just cannot take to that OS, no matter how hard I try

[sted]

He has a point tho. It's already annoying how iOS devices hug a gb or so of the built in memory. Makes the 8gb versions practically useless for anything other than a few apps.

You could argue that desktop/laptops have been like this for years, i.e Windows & other apps takes up space on the advertised HDD, but you can uninstall all of those (even the OS) and regain that space. You're kinda stuck on the Surface & taking nearly half the advertised space really is taking it a bit too far.

 

up to a point but then how many 2tb hard drives have 2tb even blank. If it says in the fine print thats x is used for system files (or hard drives 1000gb = 1tb rather than 1024) then he might have a case but if you dont read the material about it (and apply a bit of common sense then you deserve to be annoyed. I cant remember ever seeing numbers dor phones but id bet the memory on android/win8/yos is also less than the quoted after system partition etc as well

 

besides technically it does have 32gb od storage you just cant use it all

Edited November 26, 2012 by sted

[sonofsanta]

(or hard drives 100gb = 1tb rather than 1024)

 

If someone sold me a 100Gb drive as 1Tb I'd be pretty peed off...

 

I suspect that this, ahem, gentleman is perfectly aware of the situation and indeed, expected it; he is just money-grabbing and deserves to be slapped upside the heid.

[Michael]

I can't see how this lawyer's going to win. The OS and applications need to go somewhere and this is nothing new. OEM desktops and notebooks have come pre-installed with 'stuff' since day one. Plus taking formatting into account, you're never going to get the full 32GB, probably more like 30GB available in Windows.

[sted]

I can't see how this lawyer's going to win. The OS and applications need to go somewhere and this is nothing new. OEM desktops and notebooks have come pre-installed with 'stuff' since day one. Plus taking formatting into account, you're never going to get the full 32GB, probably more like 30GB available in Windows.

 

depends when has common sense and law had anything in common (esp in the usa)? To argue devils advocate (and i think this man is someone who wants his 15 mins of fame and money for nothing) i supose manufacturers could put "user memory" on 1 chip (array of chips) and have system stuff in its own unique memory. But that would up costs (though possibly not much with the cost of sd cards etc) and complexity (more likely) and i supose they could of written something like

 

ms surface 32gb*

*32gb storage space total including system overheads of x gb leaving free space for user files of x gb

 

but how many people read the * bits (and i suspect people on here will be an above average percentage as weve all been bitten before or at the very least see an * as "oh eye what are they hiding?"

[enjay]

The keyboard is a nice addition, I think. Small and easy to remove when you don't want it, but there are plenty of times where I have started writing an email or Facebook message on my tablet and then put it down in favour of the keyboard on my laptop; and I wouldn't dream of spending my working day on a touch-keyboard on the device so I think that it is essential for office use. Touch-screen keyboards are not as quick to use as "proper" ones, especially if you factor in the time it takes to move the tablet from a comfortable reading position to a comfortable typing position and back again.

 

That said, from what I see on the advert, the Surface uses a little flap on the back of the tablet to stand up, so you couldn't use it on your lap (where I do 99% of my recreational computer use), only on a table.

[Arthur]

the Surface uses a little flap on the back of the tablet to stand up, so you couldn't use it on your lap, only on a table.

You can use it on your lap...

 

http://s10.postimage.org/tg9owcgll/677449175.jpg

 

http://youtu.be/oCPyUbw8AzY?hd=1

[Michael]

depends when has common sense and law had anything in common (esp in the usa)? To argue devils advocate (and i think this man is someone who wants his 15 mins of fame and money for nothing) i supose manufacturers could put "user memory" on 1 chip (array of chips) and have system stuff in its own unique memory. But that would up costs (though possibly not much with the cost of sd cards etc) and complexity (more likely) and i supose they could of written something like

 

ms surface 32gb*

*32gb storage space total including system overheads of x gb leaving free space for user files of x gb

 

but how many people read the * bits (and i suspect people on here will be an above average percentage as weve all been bitten before or at the very least see an * as "oh eye what are they hiding?"

 

You're probably right - plus it's only a matter of time before SSDs catch up the old skool rotational hard drives. What comes pre-installed will be less of an issue if you had a 1TB drive installed.