Software Uses Almost 1/2 the Storage On 32GB Surface Tablet 471
First time accepted submitter jigamo writes "Microsoft's newly released Surface tablets are available in 32 and 64 GB capacities. The company has disclosed how much of that space is available to the user. After taking into account Windows RT, Microsoft Office, built-in apps, and Windows recovery tools, nearly 13 GB of the available space is eliminated from user accessible storage. Microsoft's recommendations for adding additional capacity are to use cloud storage, a memory card, or a USB storage device."
Full of microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Full of microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean to say that it's half-full of Microsoft.
But as an optimist, I would rather say it's half free of it!
Re:Full of microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
And how much is it to add an additional 32gb or 64gb to your iPad if you hit your storage limit? $20 or $49 like the Surface or more? Oh wait...
Not that I have a Surface or any plans to buy one but my guess is that when you build a device that's meant to be essentially a laptop replacement and you also include expansion slots so people who need more memory can buy it off the shelf at any corner store for relatively cheap, preloading it with everything including the kitchen sink doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Yeah I'm sure a lot of it will go unused but it's not like storage space is going to be an issue for someone with a Surface, unlike an iPad where what you buy is what you have and if you ever want to store that one extra video on your tablet without deleting something it will cost you another $800 investment to get the next model up.
Impossible for apps, just like the iPad (Score:5, Informative)
And how much is it to add an additional 32gb or 64gb to your iPad if you hit your storage limit?
You swap some data out to external storage, just as Microsoft recommends.
$20 or $49 like the Surface or more?
You can't put apps onto external media on the Surface either.
Re:Impossible for apps, just like the iPad (Score:4, Interesting)
And how much is it to add an additional 32gb or 64gb to your iPad if you hit your storage limit?
You swap some data out to external storage, just as Microsoft recommends
I'm unfamiliar with recent changes to iOS. How exactly should an iPad user "swap some data out to external storage" without the help of a PC running iTunes?
Monthly data cap (Score:5, Insightful)
Well since music and movies can all be obtained through the cloud
The cloud is useless if it can't be reached because A. you have the Wi-Fi-only version and are away from home and open hotspots, B. you have no cellular data subscription, or C. you've already burned through your data plan this month.
Or of course just keep some media on external network devices
Which portable external network devices are you talking about?
or SD cards
I guess the Surface can, but I wasn't aware the iPad could play movies and the like from an SD card.
Re:Monthly data cap (Score:5, Insightful)
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iCloud
Which means you need to find a restaurant with open Wi-Fi if you want to move anything off or back on.
or with the help of a Mac running iTunes, no PC needed
Apple stopped making Macs that aren't Intel PCs six years ago. Does Apple still even make iTunes for PowerPC Macs?
Re:Impossible for apps, just like the iPad (Score:5, Funny)
It has to be a restaurant now? Damn Apple and its walled Olive Garden.
Re:Yes you CAN attach external media with an iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
The more misleading drivel I read from you the more convinced I become that you are Slashdot's best troll ever; Poe's law in action. It is solid platform for a Slashdot troll.
Re:Yes you CAN attach external media with an iPad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why pointing out that having to purchase a $30 add-on that hangs out of a device (in other words cannot be left in all the time) makes me an "android folk". Android is not even in the discussion so you can relax- the boogeyman isn't out to get you here.
I am terribly sorry if the truth offends you; a hard life is in store for you I fear.
Not quite sure what that really means. You seeming like a troll doesn't hurt my feelings at all.
It's a little hard to understanding[sic*] how pointing out a fact is misleading.
I'm fairly certain you know exactly why it is misleading but I will spell it out anyway. The Surface has an SD slot. I could plug an extra N gigabytes of additional space into it and forget about it. The iPad does not. The iPad apparently has an add-on called a "camera connection kit" made to load pictures which appears to also allow loading other media as well. This is not plug in and forget. This is: "hope you remembered to bring it when you feel the urge to use it". Most people do not even know this exists; fewer would use it.
I know somebody poked fun at an iPad's lack of expandable storage but it was not a personal attack against you. You are not an iPad. You know what people mean when they talk about expandable storage. You know the iPad does not have it in the same sense. Nonchalantly claiming the iPad has expandable storage is a lie of omission.
Re:Yes you CAN attach external media with an iPad (Score:5, Informative)
You might be OK misleading people even in jest; I am not. I want people to know how things work so they can intelligently decide between devices.
You say that but your post history shows the opposite. You clearly aim to mislead people when you say the iPad supports expandable storage. You are always sure to fully articulate any shortcoming in another product:
No you cannot just forget about it. You can't put applications on it. You have to remember to save media to it separately.
You cannot do that on an iPad so this is not a pro/con list between the two devices. Neither do this. Nor does it change the fact that once my SD card is in the device I can forget about it.
You always overlook the shortcomings of any Apple implementation:
You swap some data out to external storage, just as Microsoft recommends.
You already know for a fact Microsoft does not recommend you buy a dongle so you can temporarily plug in an SD card. If it was the other way around and Microsoft's tablet required a dongle we both know you would be proclaiming how terrible of an experience that is.
The only time such expansion really matters is for something like a long trip with spotty access to data connections, so in the end that difference does not really matter much.
Just plain false. Cell data is expensive (and only available on a small percentage of tablets) and wifi is in no way ubiquitous enough in most of the world to make "the cloud" a viable alternative to local storage.
Re:Yes you CAN attach external media with an iPad (Score:4, Insightful)
I post facts; you post facts but omit the whole story. ... It's hardly misleading when it does in fact do exactly that.
When I buy an iPad can I plug in my SD card? No? You mean you omitted the part about needing to buy an additional dongle?
You keep insisting you cannot do something that you can; why would you state something so plainly false? It would reduce trust of your views in the anyone reading your posts.
Can you or can you not install apps to an SD card on an iPad? Without Jailbreaking (we'll assume for a second the user knows they need a "camera connection kit" and does not think it is a ridiculous requirement).
You are wrong. Cell data is not that expensive; but more importantly in everyday life WiFi is pervasive.
Cell data is expensive. Denying that is asinine. Wifi is not pervasive in any useful measure. It may almost always be present but it is not very helpful to have an encrypted AP. Yes I have wifi at home and at work but both of those places my tablet is really only going to be used as a remote control. Where are the number one spots media on a tablet is useful? Probably trains, buses, bus stops, malls. Some of those will have wifi, some of them will have poor quality wifi and most of them will have no wifi. No matter what remote storage has degraded availability over local.
I am not quite sure exactly what you are going on about "well off enough to buy a tablet" and their "networking environment". They really have nothing to do with each other. Large metropolitan areas occasionally have good wifi availability. More often than not, though, a few key points have wifi access here and there. I imagine you will find a small percentage of the united states has open wifi availability. You may only travel between work and your home but many people "well off enough to buy a tablet" probably leave their little city bubble and would like to listen to music while doing it.
In any case I am more reassured now that you are a troll. Definitely one of the best (possibly the very best) I've seen on Slashdot so congrats on that. What concerns me is how often people agree with your most likely (hopefully) trolls. Troll on.
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Where I live, I cannot travel from my home to my work without losing the (supposedly city-wide) crappy 'free' WiFi signal almost as soon as I leave either place.
But mostly people are loading media where they work or live. Point, me.
I have travelled all over the world and not had an issue getting WiFi if I needed it.
Perhaps you should get out more and think about how people really use devices.
How well does that work for you on road trips? There's only so long that I can linger over a mochachino at Starbucks before going completely mental...and I am absolutely not anal (or, admittedly, organized) enough to pre-plan my entire road trip playlist beforehand! Me, I just pack along extra SD cards with more songs/videos from my library instead...a quick swap and I'm chilling to classic rock instead of alternative, or watching sci-fi instead of comedy.
I can only cite how I use my devices, and AFAIK th
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Have you seen how big the Metro Solitaire app is? When I checked app disk use it was something over 100MB! Yeah granted it does have a few different game types including freecell, but that disk consumption for just a simple app is absurd. Minesweeper was similarly huge, over 100MB again there.
Maybe everything is statically linked or something, I just don't see where they managed to burn all that space. Raw bitmap cards maybe? You'd almost have to work to make it that bloated either way.
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You'd likely have more than 20GB of apps on a tablet? What the heck are you installing (1000 Angry birds)? Things like Skype, Facebook, Twitter etc are all ~20MB or so sized apps. You already have office with this thing so the big productivity suite install is already included in the space you lost. As well supposedly iOS only takes 1GB on the iPad, so you're comparing 31 to 20GB of useable space. The surface for an extra $20 you can have 52GB of space: though you are a bit limited on the app/data breakdown
Re:Full of microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, ipad comparison is hilarious. Surface has the industry standard microSD port. Just put in another 32 gigs. Costs something around 30€ at the moment.
With ipad, you're SOL.
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Frankly, ipad comparison is hilarious. Surface has the industry standard microSD port. Just put in another 32 gigs. Costs something around 30€ at the moment.
With ipad, you're SOL.
You can only use that space on the SD card for data. You cannot use it to store apps.
What apps are that big? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can only use that space on the SD card for data. You cannot use it to store apps.
Say the Surface's memory is evenly divided into 16 GB for the operating system and included applications and 16 GB for third-party applications, with all music and movies on a microSD card. What kind of application collection takes up 16 GB, other than a bunch of hardcore games? I thought hardcore games weren't ported to Windows RT, and most apps and casual games were far smaller than that.
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but it's not uncommon on iOS for someone to have that many.
Really? I just did a quick survey of the people in my office and not one was using more than 16GB (including music and movies) on any of their devices (both Apple and Android) . For most people, tablets are toys for facebooking, photos, email, web browsing, and a maybe some music. From my own group of acquaintances, not one uses them for regular movie or TV watching (although mnay admit to loading a movie or two if they intend taking a long haul flight), and not one has even 1GB of apps let alone 16+.
Recovery partition? (Score:5, Informative)
The Surface comes partitioned with a 3.5GB recovery partition, which can fully reset the device including drivers, OS updates, full volume encryption + losing the recovery key, and people running amok with Admin permissions (assuming they don't mess with the recovery volume itself). The iPad, last I checked, still required the use of a real PC if something goes drastically wrong and it needs resetting. It can handle typical reset scenarios just fine, but can't be used to downgrade (or so I'm told; that may be wrong). I don't know if the iPad even supports installable drivers, either (although on the Surface RT, they must be signed by MS so hopefully not *too* much harm would occur from them).
The Surface also comes with the standard suite of Windows admin tools, including the Management Console and the Disk Management snap-in for it. You can modify the partitions if you want to. You could even back up the recovery volume to a USB storage device or NAS (the device supports booting from USB, not sure about NAS) and then remove the recovery partition and extend the main volume to fill its space. You can also mount a removable storage device, such as a microSD card or USB Mass Storage volume, into the root filesystem. Can an iPad do anything like that?
Re:Recovery partition? (Score:5, Informative)
"The iPad, last I checked, still required the use of a real PC if something goes drastically wrong and it needs resetting."
You can completely erase your iPad and restore apps, data, and the OS from iCloud -- no PC required. Even if you lose your iPad, you can just log in with your iTunes account from a brand new iPad and all of your apps, settings, even icon positions are restored from iCloud -- no PC required.
"The Surface also comes with the standard suite of Windows admin tools, including the Management Console and the Disk Management snap-in for it. You can modify the partitions if you want to. You could even back up the recovery volume to a USB storage device or NAS (the device supports booting from USB, not sure about NAS) and then remove the recovery partition and extend the main volume to fill its space. You can also mount a removable storage device, such as a microSD card or USB Mass Storage volume, into the root filesystem. Can an iPad do anything like that?"
Are you referring to the ARM version (the one referenced in the article or the x86 version?
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iPad doesn't need drivers, it's a different creature. It can print to any AirPrint printer, and that's about it. Also, you can backup your iPad to iCloud, and if something goes drastically wrong, restore from there too (i believe- i haven't had anything go that drastically wrong ever).
I'm curious about your claims in the second paragraph? Is this all from first hand knowledge, developer notes or speculation? From what I'm reading, Windows RT is QUITE locked down, hindering all sorts of things. With Surface
Considering this is Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Considering this is Windows... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah but you can just pop in an SDXC mini-SD card for $50 have have another 64GB for music/movies which is what fills a device.
The 32GB is essentially a system and application drive. And since it's Windows RT I doubt most applications will be larger than 100MB. So from a functional standpoint that leaves space for 20GB * (1000/100) = 200 applications at least. More likely most applications are around 10MB.
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Re:Considering this is Windows... (Score:4, Insightful)
That was actually the way smartphones of old worked, and it's a FAR more customer-friendly approach. "We give you a smallish system drive and a functional expansion slot so you can buy as much as you need".
Considering microSD prices and the product, this is going to be a deal breaker for no one.
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It's a bit more for one that doesn't lag while presenting here said movies and music.
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errr..think content, such as music, movies, etc.
You appear to mean only noninteractive content. As I understand it, anything interactive, such as a game, will have to be installed to the application partition.
Re:Considering this is Windows... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you think that's a big deal because a 16 GB iPad costs $100 more than a 32GB one [apple.com], versus $9.99 to add 16GB to the Surface [newegg.com]. And in fact, the add-in card is better, because you easily swap out different cards with different contents. I have a MicroSD with my entire music collection for my Sansa Clip+, and might want to pop it into a tablet without waiting for a 20GB file copy.
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That said, I just read Farhad Manjoo's review of the Surface [slate.com], and I don't think the amount of memory matters for other reasons... namely that the Surface is a sluggish, buggy faux-pc that also isn't any better for "real work" than the iPad. In particular, MS Office on the Surface sux. Pity.
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13GB is not bad. I made the mistake of getting a 40gb SSD for my Windows 7 partition. I recently upgraded it to a 120GB one, much better.
Except its a *Tablet* running a tablet OS, and you can't upgrade the hard drive. Equivelant OS's have a smaller footprint.
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Except its a *Tablet* running a tablet OS, and you can't upgrade the hard drive.
Actually, not really - it's basically running Windows 8 for ARM. Also, unlike the iPad you can add an SD card.
Still pretty absurd, though. And I guess it explains why they didn't release a 16GB version!
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The only way Microsoft could enter the tablet market this late and possibly succeed is to offer something nobody else can offer and that some people (think they) need. Namely MSOffice. They probably did a quick and dirty port to WIN32 on ARM (y'know, the API that dare not speak its name, but remains the basis for Microsoft's monopolies). So the huge multi-gigabyte app designed for desktops and laptops with hundreds of gigabytes gets shoved onto the Surface.
As many have said, it's not that bad, since you
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And WTF do I need Office on a tablet for? That's why my notebook and PC are for, and in a pinch my netbook. As long as I can view Office documents and write out the odd note, I can't imagine any reason at all that I would want to use my tablet for that purpose.
if you look at the windows 8 offerings, many are convertible tablets that doc into keyboards. MSFT is trying to blur the lines between a tablet and a laptop ... and get people to replace their laptops with convertible tablets.
it's a good idea and you have to give some credit to them for trying something different, but i don't think the tech is there yet. folks aren't going to pay $800 for a tablet that's slower than the laptop they bought 3 years ago and has a tenth of the storage.
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I'm thinking the problem will soon become apparent. Microsoft doesn't know what tablets are for, and thus is trying to turn tablets into notebooks.
I can buy a notebook that will kick Surface's ass from here to next Tuesday, with storage like ten times as great, far better horsepower and a much more usable Office for less than Surface.
Again, Microsoft is trying to up an iPad in the same that adding wings to car would be trying to get one up on a Chevy.
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I can buy a notebook that will kick Surface's ass from here to next Tuesday, with storage like ten times as great, far better horsepower
The average person works in email, browser and office. So, why does he need something that will kick Surface's ass? He doesn't do video editing in Premiere Pro, so what would he need the extra power for? The Surface does everything he needs to do and it does it fast and with no delays.
much more usable Office
So you have a much more usable Office than Office? Where?
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No. Even considering that this is windows, it is still *extremely* bad.
This is indicative of the same bloat and indiscretion for efficiency that has caused every MS GUI OS to plummet into user-hindrance after NT.
It's trite-ware; full of shit that no majority needs, but the MS handicap has convinced itself it must employ in order to reach every conceivable userbase desire conceivable, no matter how miniscule. If competition has it, so must they, only a fraction as good and double the footprint.
Including al
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13GB is not bad. I made the mistake of getting a 40gb SSD for my Windows 7 partition. I recently upgraded it to a 120GB one, much better.
I know what you're getting at, but that's only a win if the user accepts the fact that MS clumsily ported their desktop OS. To compare with Apple, both take roughly the same amount of hard drive space (give or take 5 or 10 GB, but same order of magnitude). When Apple developed the iOS, they stripped out a ton of the bulk to make it around a gig or so. I can't imagine that Windows needs that much code; it's just being half-assed.
13GB? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems ridiculous to me that 13GB is taken by the OS and built-in software.
How does that compare to iOS? And to be fair, how does that compare to iOS+Pages+Keynote+Numbers?
Re:13GB? (Score:4, Informative)
Just checked my 16GB iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.1, 13.47 gigs of available space.
Re:13GB? (Score:5, Informative)
When the retina iPad was introduced, Pages went from 95MB to 269MB, and Numbers went from 109MB to 283MB. [cnet.com]
Keynote currently clocks in at 286MB. [appshopper.com]
Realistically, that means the OS and productivity suite (if you need the whole thing... most people will have no use for Keynote unless they're actually giving presentations) are taking 2.3GB away from your usable space. That's 14% on a 16GB iPad, 7% on a 32GB, or roughly 4% of a 64GB model.
With Windows NT, the NT stood for New Technology. [wikipedia.org] Perhaps the RT in Windows RT stands for Retaining-water [wikipedia.org] Technology.
Microsoft Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, so you're accounting for what is likely to be the largest single software install (as in storage) available for the unit outside of the OS. What is it without the Office package?
Re:Microsoft Office (Score:5, Funny)
32GB? That's like booting off a floppy nowadays. (Score:2)
Yes, really. There's no nice way to say it.
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Indeed. I remember when a 40gb disk was huge.
To... much... bloat...
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I remember my first floppy disk drive with 68K per 5.25" disk.
That was my third computer.
Also, get off my lawn.
well LA TE DA! (Score:2)
Re:32GB? That's like booting off a floppy nowadays (Score:5, Funny)
http://fatphil.org/images/im_floppier.jpg
Next!
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40GB? Heck, I remember when 40MB was huge. I remember when 5MB was amazing.
Now get off my lawn.
OMFG software uses storage space?!?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought all that was stored in the tiddly-winks chips.
(16GB for Windows, Office and media apps.... my Desktop uses FAAAAAAR more. Get it through your head people - Surface is a touch screen ultrabook, not a tablet.)
Hmmm (Score:2)
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And? Does the definition of a TABLET contain "has less than 10% of the available space occupied by the operating system and base applications"? Perhaps it differs somehow from tablets, which are ultimately just portable touch-screen devices. Just because the iPad & Nexus 7 use a small percentage of their storage for the OS doesn't mean that it's somehow The Law.
Microsoft's recommendations (Score:2, Insightful)
Here is my recommendation: "Buy something else."
I for one, bought a Google Nexus 7, and quite like it.
It DOES accept a MicroSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's actually kind of cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's actually kind of cool that the user can pop in a memory card. I guess I have gotten a little to used to iProducts that don't allow such niceties.
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Aha! (Score:5, Funny)
So there is a 16GB Surface! :-)
Memory card. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Memory card. (Score:5, Interesting)
By pure coincidence, 13 Gb with no expansion slot is all you get on a Nexus 7 16 Gb.
...and you can buy three for the price of a surface giving you about 39gb of space :)
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It's not like you can use that card to install applications on, so what does it really matter?
Media collection?
Microsoft Recommends (Score:3, Insightful)
Other misc recommendations
REMEMBER, TABLETS ARE LOW MAINTENANCE! (compared to PC's)
With Love,
Microsoft
PS: You really did not think things would change THAT much!
Re:Microsoft Recommends (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from "Link your tablet to MS Live account" that's mostly bollocks.
.NET (Score:3, Informative)
is like 4GB alone. They need to get rid of the bloat if they are serious about mobile/tablet.
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It does. [slickpic.com] Next question.
Not surprising (Score:3)
So this was always my assumption of putting a full OS on a tablet. It simply would not have enough power or memory to really make it work, even using something like the simplified interface that was so-recently-called-Metro. Even the 64 GB iPad is getting insufficient. I am not going to buy another until there is 128GB.
So, big surprise, building a table to meet a price point is not going to result in a high end experience, no more than buying the cheapest laptop allows one to create a feature film. In this case, however, we may find that bloated software may not even allow one to write a memo in MS Word. I suspect we will find the low end solution is still going to be Android and Google Drive.
The solution is obvious (Score:2)
Just do what this guy did and use two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-pMZd1fupw
cannot install apps on micro-sd card (Score:4, Informative)
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Simply not true for Android. You can install apps on the SD card of an Android device: I've been doing it for more than a year because I have had no choice. I have been using an original HTC Desire as my primary phone for more than a year now, and it has a pathetically small amount of internal storage (only 512 megabytes, and only 150 of those are user-accessible!). It would be almost completely worthless if I was unable to install apps to the much larger 16 GB SD card I bought for it. Granted, there are ce
Paraphrasing Mr. Gates (Score:3)
I RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
5GB is a recovery partition.
3GB is lost* due to 32GB drive = ~32,000,000,000 bytes. System reports that as 29GiB.
* The advertised local disk size is shown using the decimal system, while Windows displays the disk size using the binary system. As a result, 1 GB (in decimal) appears as about 0.93 GB (in binary). The storage capacity is the same, it's just shown differently depending on the how you measure a GB (decimal or binary).
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the article says 13GB and almost half (Score:3)
8GiB for RT+Office+apps
5GiB for recovery
That's 13GiB gone. From 29GiB, that's almost half.
'After taking into account Windows RT, Microsoft Office, built-in apps, and Windows recovery tools, nearly 13 GB of the available space is eliminated from user accessible storage.'
I don't really get what your complaint is here. The summary seems pretty accurate, especially for slashdot.
Where did I put that file? (Score:4, Insightful)
This may not sound convincing to the nerds who know their way around a computer, but the Surface is a Windows machine, and an iPad is an iPad. The concept of storage device, drive letter, file location is not really required on an iPad. I suppose you can say you need to know whether it is on the iPad or on the Cloud, but that's different from which drive to access to find your movie file, or which memory stick to use (did you label it?). Sure, I'd prefer a device with cheap expandability, but the iPad has sacrificed in a lot of areas to be as simple as possible, and for a vast many people that is a good thing.
Re:Where did I put that file? (Score:4)
Sure, I'd prefer a device with cheap expandability, but the iPad has sacrificed in a lot of areas to be as simple as possible, and for a vast many people that is a good thing.
The reason there is no expandable storage is so that you will buy the next model up. Do you really think it costs Apple anything close to another $100 to go from 16GB to 32GB?
Re:32 gig sd card is cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't forget to say that cloud storage is no good in Canada, where uncapped internet doesn't really exist, and mobile plans are absolute garbage.
Yes, it's so bad that it's worth mentioning twice.
Re:32 gig sd card is cheap (Score:4, Informative)
There are options if you want unlimited Internet in Canada. Fewer or greater depending on where you live. They do tend not to be the mainstream carriers though. Fortunately, I happen to live in a small area serviced by a cable provider that offers unlimited.
Re:Registry Editor (Score:5, Informative)
It's supposed to be a freakin tablet.
Which is a freakin' computer running a freakin' operating system.
Re:Registry Editor (Score:5, Funny)
It's supposed to be a freakin tablet.
Which is a freakin' computer running a freakin' operating system.
With freakin' lasers attached to their heads!
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My android phone has 3 of those.
A file system browser is always handy, and so it notepad. If you actually want to do useful work a command prompt can be damn handy.
These types of things take up very little space, Office is likely what is taking up all the space.
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because you might need them when things break.
it's windows.
also, my android phone have a file system browser, a notepad, and a command prompt, and they take waaaaay less space
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Registry is part of Windows and an editor would be a good idea. Why wouldn't you need a file system browser? I have one on Android for managing files, Android (and I believe jailbroken iPhones) have a terminal, Notepad is another popular app that many tablet users download. The only thing I can see as unnecessary is the Direc
How about a car analogy, then. (Score:2)
Would you drive your car around with the hood welded shut and no lug wrench?
If you insist on keeping important configuration in a ludicrously unreadable binary registry, instead of simple and efficient text files, you aren't going to be able to maintain the box with a general purpose tool like a word processor or text editor. Windows systems pretty much require a registry editor.
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None of those tools take up a significant amount of space. You can remove them if you WANT to, but their usefulness far outweighs that.
Plus, the command prompt is needed if you want to run batch files. Some installers, even modern ones, do. And for workplaces, IT will likely have a bunch of logon scripts written that may rely on it.
Registry Editor, as well as most of the tools you named, would probably be more likely used by IT to try to diagnose problems with a device. Without it you can still use reg.
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My guess is that no matter how much they polish it up to make it all tablet-ey -- underneath, it's still Windows, which has all the same crap as any other Windows, and you'll need this stuff to make work.
It sounds like they haven't made anything which lives in a smaller footprint.
Of course, Microsoft will say they needed that much space to cram in the awesomeness. Me, I'm just going to ca
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Notepad: 189KB
dxdiag: 336KB
regedit: 10KB
cmd: 337KB
total: 872KB
Re: (Score:2)
Why doesn't a tablet need a file system browser? Are you not going to put any files on it?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Registry Editor (Score:4, Insightful)
You misspelled "apple land" there. Microsoft handily includes a microSD port with its tablets.
You seem too used to the fact that in apple tablets and phones, whatever memory you buy the device with, you're stuck with. This is not the case here.
Re: (Score:2)
It does say almost half on a 32GB tablet. I don't know about your world but 40% is almost half in mine.
Re:Its windows (Score:5, Informative)
What did you expect? Of course to be fair, if you install a *full* version of the average desktop linux ( or bsd ) distribution you get tons of stuff by default too. Most of it you dont want.
But still, for a tablet product they should have gone out of their way not to just toss crap onto it. Space is not cheap, like it is on a desktop.
Idiots.
Calling other people idiots doesn't make them so. As for your comparison with a Linux Desktop with a healthy selection of Apps I am running at 7GB after many months. I suspect a fresh install would require much less. Ubuntu for example https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements [ubuntu.com] suggests 5GB.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
And the fact that you CAN access external media, unlike that other popular, non-android table.... pad thing.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can spend $700 on a tablet computer, you can spend $50 on a 64 GB thumb drive.
Not the same. You'll always have a dongle sticking out of the tablet, it may not fit in the case, it gets caught on things when you put it in a bag, etc. Now an SD card is not so bad. Still some inconvenience in that you can't import pictures off other SD cards, but it's *much* better than those tablets that don't even have an SD slot.