Surface Pro versus MacBook Air: Who's being dishonest with storage space?
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
Edit: this is factually incorrect. There is also a 64 GB MacBook Air model on offer; I forgot about it. I apologize.
~90 GB of free space on both 128 GB models seems reasonable. Stepping down to just ~26 GB free on the 64 GB model seems unreasonable: the usable capacity is less than half of the advertised capacity.
I feel similarly about the recovery partition discussion. If you remove the recovery image, I presume you will not be able to recover the Surface Pro without additional media. The Macbook Air, on the other hand, will allow you to do a fresh re-installation of OS X over the Internet with a completely blank disk: it's baked into the firmware. Therefore, removing the recovery image results in a feature disparity between the systems. Grumble.
What bloat and crapware are you talking about? Office?
If the 128GB MBA is taking up similar space, does it mean that it too comes with "bloat and crapware" ?
That means you can get an MBA 11" 128GB plus a huge 128GB iPad instead of a MBA 11" 512GB.
Lots of people with 13" Airs don't realise the 11" lacks the SD card reader, so it's a common mistake to make. (It's also a pity the 11" doesn't have it - I've missed the SD card reader a lot more than the ethernet port.)
How it benefits Apple to offer only a 768 (and why that number) I will never know. I can only imagine the sales they lose for not having the 256 or 512 options in the iMac. Its not like they don't have the parts
Perhaps the MBA 64 GB has hibernate image file removed or some other similar tricks?
Apple is making at least 50% margins on this, probably /much much/ more.
> (April 17th) We are currently testing a sample of 40 4GB microSD cards from Sandisk to failure
> Its May now and still no cards have failed.
> we were testing a card from a customer yesterday on a TS-7553 and it failed the DoubleStore stress tests within the day. [...] The test failed at approximately 13 GB of raw data written
> The ATP card failed a 3rd time after 65GB of data written.
> Another, separate ATP card failed after 877 GB of write activity
If the card is MLC and there's no or limited wear leveling, repeated local writes will shut the card dead quickly ("limited" as in wear leveling being applied only among e.g a 4MB group of cells, Sandisk happens to do that). I've also heard of some controllers implementing wear leveling, muddling the test results.
Some cards are truly reliable, others are craptastic, and everything in between is possible. The problem is you can't trust a brand and go for it, and getting the technical details, if at all possible, involves digging into cryptic and hard to find documentations.
I can't find the link again to a test of someone who tested various card brands and had them die semi-reliably within 15 minutes.
[0]: http://forum.embeddedarm.com/showthread.php?3-SD-card-endura...
When people buy a laptop they expect the OS will take up a good chunk of the storage space. When people buy a tablet they don't have that expectation.
More importantly, when the free space is significantly less than half the advertized storage and there is no warning that's the case people are going to be surprized and upset, and rightfully so.
In a Macbook Air the worst you get is a reduction to about 70-75% of the listed storage capacity (in the 128 or 64 gb models), which is annoying but not crazy. In the Surface Pro 64 model you are reduced to about 1/3 of the initial capacity, which is ridiculous and definitely deserves some sort of warning on the packaging, I would think. Expecting a reduction by 1/4 is reasonable common sense, experiencing a reduction by 2/3 is surprising.
Why? My linux install has a full dev environment and office suite and doesn't take a ton of room.
Users expect their office suites to crash, but that doesn't mean that we as developers shouldn't be constantly trying to improve our code.
Are people honestly getting regular office suite crashes?
I don't use MS Office on windows much, so I can't comment on its stability.
A Windows install, for example, will have lots of pre-cached drivers, a crap-ton of little utility programs, several pre-installed libraries and frameworks (.net, vb6, etc.), and a VM for running 32-bit apps. All of these things provide valuable features for the OS.
Now, on top of that there is certainly plenty of bloat, and in many instances linux has simply approached these same problems differently. For example by installing shared libraries on demand via the internet through a package management system, or by simply having poorer hardware and cross-architecture support (zing!), or by having a vast ecosystem of open source tools available so that it's always possible to install something via a native compilation. Those are good choices for the linux way of doing things but they certainly come with tradeoffs.
P.S. Linux should be installable on the Surface Pro, so if the hardware intrigues anyone it might be worthwhile to see how it fares with a different OS.
But not so much with tablets. However, we are also ignoring the fact that its whole Windows 8 there on Surface unlike mobile only iOS which is ~1 GB.
Well perhaps they should have that expectation, because the reality is no different on Apple phones or tablets.
My 16GB iPhone should have 15.25GB of space (16 billion bytes), but it doesn't. It's formatted capacity is 13.7 GB.
The reality is that they don't and tablets and phones are no better though.
Given that mess, I can't see the marketeers taking the trouble to distinguish between total and free space. The first company to honestly advertise the space on their device in the manner you describe will miss out on sales due to poorly written (or poorly understood) comparison tables.
Personally, I wouldn't want a 'tablet' with a USB drive sticking out two inches all the time.
64gb mba, 48gb free ~ 3/4ths
64gb surface, 23gb free ~ 1/3rd
You are, of course, welcome to produce some bulletproof factual examples (since you have just shown your opinions are not worth anything) to prove otherwise.
Either way, based on long experience, I always suspect that anyone who says "To be honest" really means "I am just about to lie".
To be honest, I really don't care what you think because so far you've done nothing but troll me. Using "sloppy" spelling as a reason to discredit what I said as well as calling me a liar? Come on, you surely can do better than that!
> "His views are not partisan"
As I pointed out before, you have problems understanding and/or using the English language. Partisan means "an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party, or cause, especially a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/partisan
Now, the gist of your unsupported attack on Bott is that he is partisan, but you keep saying he is "not partisan".
See what I did there? I pointed out your mistake, and I supported it with independent factual evidence. If you want to take part in a grown up conversation, you should learn to do the same.
> "I really don't care what you think because so far you've done nothing but troll me."
Again, you obviously don't have a clue what trolling is. However, I reckon you can probably use Google to figure it out. Calling you out for bullshit is not trolling.
I have previously pointed out that you are attacking someone without producing any evidence, but you continually resort to ad hominem attacks (calling me a troll is another ad hominem attack, following your ad hominem attack on Bott).
You claim to be against ad hominem attacks and name calling (see above) but this is exactly what you are doing! This fits perfectly with the strategy of using the word "honest" when you are being dishonest.
Still, you can prove you are honest pretty easily, as follows....
Show us some evidence that you have a clue what you are talking about. Bott posts evidence of his expertise and (very high) professional standing, and I linked to that above. Where is yours?
Next, produce the evidence that Bott was "paid by Microsoft", and under what circumstances.
If you can't support your claim with evidence then, sadly, nobody has any alternative but to decide that you are a liar. It's not just me. Rational people want to hear rational arguments based on checkable facts. That's not too much to ask of you, is it?
> "The truth is that you are not really interested in actually discussing the facts."
Another ad hominem attack on me that attempts to divert the discussion away from the point. The truth is that I keep asking you for facts and you have not provided any. None.
So, are you going to keep posting bullshit replies? It might not be a wisest approach. As it is (and this is a factual observation) you're just making yourself look stupid.
Ed Bott has an impressive professional record and a statement of disclosure: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-the-team/us/ed.bott/
Where's yours?
As with the MacBook Air and other systems, the 64GB or 128GB (decimal) that is advertised only comes to 59GB or 119GB of real (binary) space.
If you are still naive enough to think that buying a 128GB PC or drive gets you 128GB of usable binary file space then your calculation cannot possibly be correct.
Note, I'm not saying that 1/2 is good, merely that 1/3 is wrong.
"But the iPad is a better tablet!!!", yeh but the surface is a full system. "But the air is better laptop!!" yeh but the surface has tablet capabilities. "Buy an Air + iPad!!" I dont want to pay extra plus its a hassle to carry + manage 2 devices
Is the Surface Pro a "good enough" laptop? I'd argue no, not with the keyboard/trackpad situation and lack of a rigid connecting hinge. Ars's review noted as much. As it a "good enough" tablet? I'd argue no, not with the weight, heat, and short battery life.
Now, obviously "good enough" is in the eye of the beholder. When people rag on Surface Pro, the thinking is that it's not going to be "good enough" in both roles for the majority of customers, and as such isn't going to sell.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the unit is priced at more serious users, those who can't get away with an iPad + keyboard attachment by itself. Those users are more likely to see the keyboard/trackpad issue as a deal breaker for serious work. Less serious users, who don't need the extra capability, have no reason to look at it over an iPad.
Also, don't forget about how 7" tablets factor into the equation, because they make it more practical to carry a laptop + tablet. An 11.6" MBA + iPad Mini 16GB will run you $1330 versus about $1030 for 64GB for the Surface, and weigh in at around a pound heavier. But, in return you get more combined screen real estate, more combined storage, and triple the combined battery life.
That's probably going to be solved soon. The incentive to build X86 android tablets is high and, by judging the battery life of the Atom powered Motorola phone, it'll be a very attractive option.
To me this is the first iteration of a brand new form factor. Of course it has problems. But the great thing is that the other companies like Lenovo, ASUS,HP..ect will look at this and hopefully see its problems and iterate on it. Also the new intel CPU is aimed at this form factor, which is suppose to cut heat and battery use to "near" ARM levels.
For me it will be amazing to have 1 product for everything. Ubuntu on my tablet? sure! hook up to external monitor, write on it, type on the screen, type on the mini keyboard, type on a full keyboard? all possible.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon - what is the innovation? Carbon Fiber?
TouchSmart 9300 Elite - an iMac clone with an external power brick?
Yes! It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The first Macbook Air significantly compromised to achieve its form factor, and now the Surface is doing the same. If Microsoft can fix the compromises in two years like Apple did with the MBA, they could have a real winner.
In fact, Asus Windows 8 Laptops will soon have Leap Motion, which is a far far superior option to touch screen. Hopefully Apple follows suit with their Macbook Pros.
To be fair, I'm not as excited about Surface anymore, as I am more excited about everyone else actually. XPS 12 duo seems to be the superior convertible, and the soon to be Lenovo Helix is the best executed detachable that I've seen so far. XPS Duo 12, Helix, and Surface all offer 1080p. Surface's major differentiator is actually the pressure sensitive pen that comes bundled with the device. I'd expect the Surface to be the best artist tool of the tablet / laptops out so far. Asus differentiating themselves with the Leap Motion puts them on my radar though.
But really, it goes to show that with Windows 8, you have a ton of good choices coming up. Whats most important? Solid Keyboard / Nub / Touchpad ? Get the Lenovo Helix.
Wanna experiment with futuristic controls? Get a Asus Leap-based Windows 8 convertible when they come out.
Like the Pen? Get the surface.
How do you know? Have you tried it yourself? Have you tried it outside a demo context? Have you played an extended gaming session? Done actual context creation? You'd have to have done all that before you know it's not, "Hello 1989 called. Wants its Powerglove back."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
I know of what I speak. I interfaced a Mac with one in 1989.
The fact that I can hold it like a book/piece of paper/clipboard means I can shift my position whilst using it - whether that is leaning back in my seat, or walking around the house/office - in a way that's just not practical with a laptop.
*) I got an awesome tablet + laptop [best case]
*) Ok laptop but crappy as a tablet (heavy, slow...) [meh]
*) Ok tablet but crappy laptop (don't have access to all the tools, too restrictive, bad keyboard...) [meh]
*) Crappy tablet and crappy laptop. [complete disappointment]I want to see the consolidation of tablets and laptops. I dont care who does it. If iOS and Android become good enough for me to replace my laptop then great!
With existing technology, that consolidation involves a lot of compromises. My MBA + my iPad Mini may be heavier than a Surface Pro, but combined get 14-15 hours of battery life, which means I can pretty easily leave the charger at home. Can you leave the Surface Pro charger at home? With only 3-5 hours, no you can't. The combo gives me a choice of two screen sizes (13" and 8") as well as the ability to use both screens at once (say looking up documentation on the Mini while coding on the MBA). And the MBA has a far superior keyboard and trackpad.
Does consolidation outweigh those other advantages? I don't think it will except for a narrow class of people. Surface Pro is really threading the needle--targeting users who need more than just a tablet by itself (which most people don't), but also don't need a portable screen bigger than 10" or a good keyboard.
That was the idea behind the Asus Transformer, and in hardware terms, it works very well. (The software is another story.)
Of course, the resulting weight would be more like carrying both an MBA and an iPad as well, but at least you wouldn't have to pay for two motherboards, two screens, two keyboards, two sets of RAM etc.
In passing, you don't get longer battery life if you use two devices at the same time, as in your example. And if you search on one screen while coding on the other, the Surface Pro is dramatically better. You get real multi-tasking and two apps side by side on the tablet screen, and you can copy and paste between the tablet and the desktop, or use a Share charm to send stuff from one app to another. Basically, you're using the iPad mini like a book, aren't you?
The problem for Microsoft is that they are competing at the same time against laptops and tablets. For someone who's looking for a tablet, it loses badly to an iPad (the free space sticks out, but it is by now means the only place an iPad wins). For someone who's looking for a laptop, it loses to many laptops (in price, performance, ergonomics - whatever it is you care about, there's something that handily beats the Surface Pro).
Are there any people who are looking for something that's sort-of-a-tablet and sort-of-a-laptop, and are willing to get a device that is not competitive as either? We'll soon find out.
My own experience leads me to believe that until you have perfected a niche (neither laptops or tablets are there yet), extreme specialization always wins against generalization.
Is there an ultrabook laptop with a 1080p touchscreen, an active digitizer with a stylus, atleast Core i5 for $1000 to $1100 ? I am not being facetious here, I am looking to buy something to replace my 6 year old laptop so looking for real suggestions here.
Edit: Oops, didn't notice the digitizer requirement. Please disregard.
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/thinkpad-h...
I loved the X201 tablet (apart from heating issues), but the crap resolution and 16:9 on that line makes it not worth having.
I have a feeling that this year, we're going to see a lot of decent small-sized, full res devices, thanks to Apple's Retina push. Haswell is supposed to be out mid-year so that might also help create some better devices.
PRELOADED APPLICATIONS: Lenovo Companion, Lenovo QuickSnip, Lenovo Support, Lenovo Quick Launch, Lenovo Cloud Storage, Lenovo Settings, Microsoft® Office 2010 Trial, Intel® AppUp Skype™, AccuWeather, Amazon Kindle, Evernote Skitch,Evernote Security, Rara – Music
As people are complaining over how little free space the surface pro has, I wonder what the reaction to all of these on a 128gb machine would be...
EDIT: Formatting
VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook http://store.sony.com/c/VAIO-Duo-11-Ultrabook-Laptops/en/c/S...
3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor available Windows 8 64-bit 11.6" Full HD IPS touch display (1920 x 1080) Converts from tablet to laptop Digitizer stylus
Do I win a prize? ;-)
The problem for Microsoft isn't that Surface Pro isn't a good pen tablet. It's that 98% of people don't want, or don't know they want, a pen tablet. Now, before the iPad, 98% of people didn't know they wanted a tablet. That's a fair point. But in the last decade, Microsoft has demonstrated zero market making ability of that kind.
On top of that, Surface Pro is probably not the ideal pen tablet for current technology. I think a cheaper, lighter, thinner device with a Clovertrail processor, digitizer, and 8+ hours of battery life would have hit the sweet spot if Microsoft wanted to make a serious go at making pen computing happen. My guess is that the battery life is going to lose them a lot more customers than the extra oomph of the Ivy Bridge is going to gain them.
In fact, if you think your sweet spot PC would be attractive to a lot of people, you could set up a company and market it yourself. There are hundreds of factories in the Pearl River Delta capable of producing that sort of thing at a reasonable price. Kickstarter here you come?
That's the real hope of Surface--to free us from OEM's and their OEM crapware and OEM brain damage. Microsoft has a lot of money, but even it can't buy the Chinese/Taiwanese OEM's taste.
There is just a powerful marketing pitch in being able to sell a product "this is the one true way Windows 8 was meant to be experienced." There is a reason everyone raves about the Nexus 4/7/10. Surface is the only Windows 8 tablet on the market that can go toe to toe with Apple in terms of industrial design and vertical integration. The success of Windows 8 tablets lives and dies with Surface.
However, your point on crapware is well made. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't do anything about it (because the DoJ sued it into the ground and specifically prevented it). Also, crapware brings in money and this is significant in a market that buys on price. I don't see it changing in the near future.
Ok, poll: how many of you really want a digitizer (and have ever used one for more than a few minutes)?
I like it because it can be a full laptop, with real hinge (unlike the Surface Pro), but can still detatch to be a real tablet. Coupled with the official 360° handstrap case, I don't find its heft to be an issue in tablet mode either.
I was unsure about whether I'd have use for the stylus when I bought it, but it has exceeded expectations. It is great for inputting short text here and there (e.g. searching the web). It is also great for having finer grained input for those occasions when I want to drop into the Win8's 'desktop mode' without switching the hardware back into 'notebook mode' (i.e. avoiding the need for the mouse pad for casual usage).
A tablet is nothing like as portable as a smartphone (which also has 3G), and nothing like as fast, as powerful or as capable as a laptop (which also has a keyboard).
Are there any people who are looking for something that's sort-of-a-smartphone and sort-of-a-laptop, and are willing to get a device that is not competitive as either?
Especially as they already own both a laptop and a phone ;-)
So obviously nobody will ever buy a tablet. QED.
A lot of people would disagree with you, perhaps most people. A tablet actually is VERY similar to a large portable smartphone - it doesn't fit in your pants pocket, but it does fit in almost any other purse.
In fact, Samsung makes an extremely popular device - the Samsung Note, which is halfway between a phone and a tablet. Do play with one. "nothing like" is a strong statement that I believe has no support in reality.
> So obviously nobody will ever buy a tablet. QED.
The logic that leads to that is flawed, even if one does accept the (wrong, IMHO) premise that a tablet is nothing like as portable as a smartphone.
And my answer to "are there any people ..." is simply "we'll soon see". I don't claim to know a definite answer -- unlike, e.g. Ballmer in response to the iPhone and iPad.
I'm not particularly optimistic about Surface sales myself, but it's an extremely interesting approach. I can certainly imagine that version 3 will be a killer product, and I hope it is, but I'm not putting any money on it.
Or there is my (leaving) boss who has a laptop, desktop and iPad but is now going to a W8 tablet, probably a Surface Pro or Helix.
Or there is my (incoming) boss who has a desktop and an android tablet but would prefer a single device.
When I show my Duo off to people, no-one has said "what a bad idea". What they have said is "how much" and "can I have it".
While the surface pro itself may not be the right device, there are a lot of people who would like a good convertible device.
Cmon, battery life?
At least AAPL investors are pricing in a future loss of earnings as everyone except the hardcore fanboys move to more open platforms that are priced at 75% to 50% of Apple products and allow you to plug in USB and play along well with other manufacturer's hardware by implementing open protocols like DLNA.
Anecdote : I bought an LG TV and discovered without doing any additional setup, my Samsung phone now shows a TV icon on the photos, and when I clicked it, I was surprised to find the photo pop up on the TV. As I swipe my finger on the phone, the photos scroll on the TV. Voila! I honestly don't know whether this is some kind of PnP broadcast, DLNA, WiDi, or what!
Next : my HP laptop has an Intel WiDi app on it and the TV has a "Wifi Screen Share". Hmm, let's see...bang! Laptop screen now wirelessly mirrored on the TV. LG TV, Samsung phone, HP laptop. I bet Apple products would not work with anything other than Apple this way.
In tablets, the trend seems to be to abstract away/hide the OS as much as possible – it isn't something that runs on the machine, it is the machine – if that makes sense. Compare this to the laptop world where we're all engrained to conceive of the OS as something that is installed on the machine and in most/all cases is able to be swapped out (insert plug for your favorite Linux distro here, etc.)
So, given that, most consumers willingly accept the space the OS takes up as a given on the laptop yet the same people see the listing the tablet storage including the space required for the OS as disingenuous.
When you want to abstract away something, if your abstraction leaks, it usually hampers the user experience or user perception of the offering – as this case illustrates (IMHO).
It's framed as competing with the iPad - and most see it as a tablet, I'd wager.
I can understand consumers being confused (though I have no evidence that they are) but surely it's not too hard for HN readers to understand...
If that were the case, why would that feature even be included? Obviously it does impact the capabilities, when things go wrong.
Also interesting to note they call it a "minor tweak". What percentage of tablet (or laptop) users even know about a recovery image? I small fraction, I'd wager.
I have never used a recovery partition successfully.
But for the average, non-technical user, I think you'd see a much higher incidence of needing a system re-image due to viruses, malware, spyware, etc.
I agree few will likely know about it, but that doesn't make it invalid, nor is the space saved irrelevant to those that do.
See internet recovery: http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/
It wasn't about the inadequacy of the storage space in and of itself – 25/64GB or 90/128GB is not decidedly inadequate for all users, and is (as the article explains) in the ballpark of usable space for comparable laptops.
There's a separate issue regarding the advertising of storage industry-wide that has merit, but this issue is about the amount of usable storage space in the context of the rest of the tablet market.
Sure, the Surface is comparable on storage space to competing laptops including those offered by Apple, but it's not even in the same ballpark as competing tablets.
Microsoft is pitching the Surface as a competitor to both tablets and laptops, separately and together. It therefore needs to compete against features of both, and it seems it can't when it comes to this specific feature.
It's not clear that MS should have released the 64GB model for Surface Pro - too much overhead just looks poorly designed.
- Mac OS shows storage space the right way, because it shows capacity in KB/GB (which is base 10 by definition)
- Windows OS shows storage space the wrong way, because while using base 2, it still claims to show you space in KB,GB (but actually it's GiB)
To what is generally better: Well for the common user GB might make more sense, since every storage device is marketed with GB in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes
And people who feel cheated because of less storage space seem to ignore the fact that this tablet is running a full Windows Operating system.
I guess it's just the mindset of many to think of tablets as "big smartphones" instead of compact full-fledged computers.
1000KB = 1GB, 1000GB = 1TB is easier for most people than 1024KiB = 1GiB, 1024Gib = 1TiB.
Which works fine until people create or download a few files and find they have been conned: they don't have as much usable space as they thought they'd paid for.
Are you sure that the Surface Pro's disk actually offers 127.90 GB of block device? To my inexpert ears, that seems to imply that it's actually larger than 128 GB, which sounds wrong.
We've had at least one dispute with a customer who didn't get the "advertised" storage space when buying hosting - it's easy to you say this server has 8 x 500GB drives in a RAID10, but we've had a customer unhappy when 1.9 binary terabytes of data didn't fit onto that after RAID metadata, filesystem overhead etc.
So the new product (bigv.io) expresses storage and RAM in binary gigabytes, and I'm thinking I might convert all the dedicated server storage specifications away from lying drive manufacturer sizes, even if that means advertising a 465GiB disc. (or should we advertise size after ext3 overhead arrrggghh).
Stick with metric, it's easier on us humans.
There will always be somewhat less space than the full raw capacity. In this case the problem appears to be shipping large pre-installed software and OS on a smallish SSD. Five years from now when higher capacity is cheaper, no one will even care.
Apple is no better, but none of the other manufacturers are. Storage space is one of those wonderful facts which turn out not to be as factual they could be.
> "The parts about wear-leveling blacks and bad blocks are just part of how SSDs work. On a new SSD these numbers should be very small."
This is absolutely wrong. Modern SSDs reserve a significant part of their NAND even when new. For example, the Micron C400 used in the Surface Pro has 128GiB of NAND and reserves 6.8% as spare area, and thus presents to the OS as a 119.2GiB block device. An Intel SSD 525 with the same 128GiB of NAND reserves 12.6% spare area, so it presents 111.8GiB to the OS. The author's MacBook Air seems to have about 11.7% spare area. They're still fundamentally the same amount of storage, but drives with smaller spare area will generally perform worse when they are nearly full, and having less spare area can also reduce the longevity of the drive.
For example, I have several "60GB" drives that actually have 64GB of internal storage but the extra 4GB is reserved. I also have several "128GB" drive that actually do show up as 128GB to the OS, meaning the reserve space is in addition to the 128GB, not part of it.
Another 120GB drive I has reports the exact same binary size (112GiB) as the Macbook Air "128GB". So it appears that Apple is including the reserve space in the advertised drive size while third-party SSDs do not.
I know with flash memory the units are more exact, but are they getting better with the spinning hd's with the space accuracy?
It's not so much a question of accuracy as it is one of units. Storage manufacturers have typically used GB, software has typically used GiB, labeled as "GB."
1 GB = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes
OS X 10.6 decided to harmonize the two: it reports size in terms of GB (10^9), abandoning GiB (2^30), meaning what you see on the box finally matches what you see in software. The downside is that your files appear larger than you may be used to, since that "1.00 GB" (GiB) file is now being reported as "1.07 GB."
A PC is a general purpose device with full access to the file system and the ability to do much more than a traditional tablet. If the surface is a touchscreen laptop it should be marketed as such. I cant believe that we are all having the discussion around what a megabyte or multiple thereof is. PCs smartphones and electronics have always been so specific as to their tech specs I dont understand who decided it would be a good idea to have a conversion factor between megabyte and a "million" bytes. At the end of the day, however, its just tech press and people with too much time on their hands complaining about a small aspect of a device. Articles like this make me grumpy...
So far, HP EliteBook with its "outdoor readable screen" option (extra $100 and 2 week wait) is the best I've found, and it's not very good. Lenovo's outdoor readable screen comes close, but is not as good.
I'm sure this is a solved problem - but I can't find a decent solution. Help, anyone? Some special ipad case/screen sticker? Some screen technology I'm unaware of?
eInk in all its variants (including PixelQi) is out of the question for my use, as I need to display a live video feed as part of the application.
There's no technical problem to make sunlight readable LCDs - the technique behind the 3M "privacy screens" would work perfectly for that. In fact, I would have been able to use those privacy screens against sunlight, if they weren't embedded in glossy film :(
The market apparently does not exist - the only sunlight readable LCDs one can find come with super-hardened computers that can swim in water and withstand falling from the 6th floor. They cost $3,000 or so, and have a Core 1 Duo, if you are lucky.
I am ok with 'wasted' space on a computer, because first, I expect OS to have a substantial footprint, and second - I can see, touch, and actually 'consume' the OS files.
I am not ok with wasted space on a tablet, because to me it is a glorified book reader/mp3 player; I expect to use all the available space for storage.
Wait, you are saying Surface is actually a computer (although a shitty one), not a tablet? Well, then MSFT completely failed to communicate this message. Which is pretty regular problem for MSFT.
You are wrong. The Surface Pro, which is what we're talking about here, is a full-blown computer just like the MBA. It can run VMs as well. Or any other software you can run on a windows laptop.
MS is furiously trying to merge tablets into fully fledged PCs.
I can almost guarantee that by Windows 9 they will have some success with this, and hardware will get better and better.
But that's not to say the tablet space doesn't have enormous potential as reduced and simplified user experiences.
Microsoft is betting a lot of its chips on pushing full Windows onto smaller devices.
One key detail is that Office 365 seems to completely misjudge expectations of tablet computing.
About the 2 or 10 base, yes I think it's stupid (living 30yrs with the 2 base) but thats the way it is. MS reports GiB and Apple report GB, so it's wrong to claim both Apple and MS report their capacity in GB.
"The measurements are just expressed differently, in a way that makes Apple look generous and Microsoft look stingy."
At least our bandwidth limitations follow the base we are expecting too, can you imagine you have 100 GB / monthly but for real is 9X something?
The industry is laughing on us.
I've got about 100 GB of usable space after having installed a shit ton of apps, libraries and utilities I needed, stuff like Emacs, OpenJDK (with sources), IntelliJ IDEA, RVM with dozens of Java/Scala libraries downloaded through Maven/SBT, dozens of ruby gems, dozens of Python libraries, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Memcached, Gimp, Dropbox, GCC, many header/dev packages, some games and the list can go on.
I should mention that I'm not using a Swap, because I've got enough RAM and as long as I've got Suspend, I don't care about Hibernation.
But I'm talking about Ubuntu 12.10, which is probably the most bloated Linux distribution I ever used. What the hell is in Windows or OS X that takes so much space?
My Windows 8 Pro is 19.2 GiB (on disk). Of which 9.67 GiB is WinSxS. Which is essentially a giant component library containing dozens of different versions of DLLs third party programs use.
1.67 GiB is the driver store. 1.36 GiB is the 32 bit sub-system (SysWoW64). 700 MiB is the .Net framework (versions 1 through 4). So now we're down to 5.94 GiB of "stuff" which we can call the "OS" if you'd like, without any compatibility bits.
Linux is so tiny because Linux has a terrible backwards compatibility record. Fortunately this is hard to spot because the distro's do such a great job of hiding it (and automate much of that via their respective package managers).
But if Linux DID care about backwards compatibility at every level then the OS would be huge too, since you'd need tons of old libraries built in, tons of drivers for redundant hardware, and gunk like that.
I did not cross-shop with iPad and Nexus 10.
You can also plug in a full USB keyboard and mouse (the OS supports a pointer), use a digitizer pen or an XBox controller.
Unlike Office in Windows RT, this Office is fully uninstallable if you don't like it. Doing so will liberate about 2.3 GB of disk space. Even if you keep Office, you'll have more disk space than Microsoft claims.
How much? The 128 GB Surface Pro has a formatted capacity of 119 (binary) GB and change. A total of 8.4 GB is used for recovery data, of which 7.8 GB can be reclaimed if you prefer to keep your recovery image on external media. This leaves 110.5 GB for the main partition. On a brand new Surface Pro, about 89 (binary) GB are available. Occupying that 20 GB are 3.3 GB of hibernation file, 4 GB of pagefile, 2.3 GB of Office 2013, 10.4 GB of Windows, built-in/default apps, and so on and so forth.
Presuming the sizes of the applications remain comparable on the 64 GB model (with its 59 binary, GB formatted capacity) one would expect to see about 29 GB available by default. Take off Office and the recovery partition and there will be close to 40 GB available.
7.8 GB recoverable recovery
3.3 GM hibernation file
4.0 GB pagefile
2.3 GB Office
10.4 GB Windows + other default apps
---------
27.8 GB
The comparison in the article is with the Macbook Air, which is a laptop, not a laptop/tablet hybrid. I think this is instructive, however. My understanding is that there is no hibernation file and pagefile on an iPad. It's not trying to be a laptop. Likewise, there is no recovery partition on the iPad. (And I see very little need of one.)
The Surface Pro is a laptop in a tablet format. It's basically an old stylus tablet PC from the early 2000's done with 2012 technology, capacitative touch, and some design ideas from iPad style tablets layered on top.
Like my old tc1100 stylus tablet PC, you can use it for the same use cases as an iPad. However, there are important differences:
Holding it in bed would be a bit of a stunt. I can do it with my tc1100 if I rest my elbow on the bed and balance the thing along its diagonal through the center of gravity, with the corner resting firmly in my palm, whereas holding the iPad is like holding a book: something I don't have to think too much about. (That said, the iPad is already at the upper limit of what's tenable for me to not notice weight wise.)
Like the old tc1100, I have to be mindful of vents. A total non-issue with the iPad. I don't know what term there would be for this quality, but it's like a magic slab of touchable light. Having to think about vents ruins that.
Like the old tc1100, I would have to be mindful of battery per work session. To give credit where credit is due, the battery on the Surface Pro lasts 2X as long. However, I can put the tc1100 to sleep and hot-swap battery, so one extra battery gives me as much work endurance.
Basically, they're missing three of the essential qualities that make the iPad great as a tablet. I think they would've done better to go whole hog on the tablet/laptop hybrid idea like the IdeaPad Yoga and the Inspiron Duo. By pretending to be a tablet, they're setting up a bunch of expectations that aren't gong to be met. The tablet/hybrid is good enough for occasionally folding up as a tablet and passing around at a meeting, and doesn't seem to carry expectations beyond that.
Also, what benefit is there to be had from a tablet/laptop hybrid that I couldn't get from an "ultrabook" laptop with an 8.9" tablet? Instead of one device that's mediocre as a tablet and a laptop, I could have two devices that are great in each situation, for little additional weight. (For one thing, I could use the hybrid with a Wacom digitizer to do double duty as a poor-man's Cintiq, but that's kind of niche.)
Regardless, there's no reason for hibernation and page file to be different. They can (and should) be the same file.
Jesus there are people writing rants in this thread that don't even understand that the Surface Pro is specd similarly to the macbook air (except the surface has a much better screen)
Also of note: The GB was actually once defined by the IEEE as 1024^3 bytes.
So either you don't know what a rant is, or you don't understand English very well.
If Apple started doing that for RAM, which is still universally quantified using base 2 gigabytes, now that would be rant-worthy.
I'm not sure why he's being so misleading here, since he would have had a point anyhow.