14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s Windows 8 Pro operating system has been found to take up a lot of space on the disk, thus leaving users with less storage to enjoy, and it seems that the 64GB flavor of the Surface Pro tablet PC is affected by this as well.
The Surface Pro 128GB model was recently found to provide users with only 83GB of internal memory, as the Windows 8 install, along with the built-in apps and the recovery partition would take up 45GB of storage.
On the Surface Pro 64GB, a similar issue appears, with only 23GB of storage available for users to take advantage of, while the other 41GB are system-reserved.
According to a recent article on The Verge, a Microsoft official has already confirmed this state of facts, which sounds like bad news for those interested in the purchase of the base Surface Pro model.
However, it seems that users will actually be able to gain more storage space on their devices through creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition.
Moreover, they will be able to expand the available memory through connecting external drives via the included USB 3.0 port, or through adding microSDXC cards.
One way or the other, this still means that, out of the box, Surface Pro 64GB will arrive on shelves with less than half of the advertised storage, which might translate into slow sales.
The Surface RT slate, which arrived on shelves in the fourth quarter of the last year, suffered from similar issues, with the 32GB version offering merely half of the advertised storage out of the box.
The tablet PC hasn’t managed to impress too many buyers, and some recent reports suggested that Microsoft might have sold only around 230,000 units since the official release last year, although the Redmond-based giant hasn't confirmed this yet.
The Surface Pro flavor of the device will arrive on shelves on February 9, in 64GB and 128GB variants, while the Surface RT model was launched in 32GB and 64GB versions.