News - Microsoft Surface Pro 128GB only has 83GB of free space

[brasco]

Also depending on the RAM amount, the hyberfil.sys is a pain in the arse for hogging space, had a scary moment on an old SSD and 32GB vanishing inexplicably, took some googling to sort that out.

[valhar2000]

Sounds very poorly optimised for what is essentially a mobile-oriented OS, where storage is often at a premium.

You're thinking of the Surface RT. The big selling point of the Surface Pro is that it has an i386 processor and thus can run Windows 8, rather than a tablet version of Windows.

On the other hand, this does seem like way to much space for a Windows 8 + Office installation, much mroe than what I see in my VMs. That's why I wonder what else they may be bundling with it.

[crossy]

You're thinking of the Surface RT. The big selling point of the Surface Pro is that it has an i386 processor and thus can run Windows 8, rather than a tablet version of Windows

"i386" - think you mean "x86". If it was a 386 then I don't think many folks would be interested - since most have mobiles more powerful than that these days! If memory serves it's an i5 in the Pro, which I guess makes it up to the level of most laptops/ultrabooks these days, (clock speed permitting of course)

[spraint]

Why not provide the recovery partition on a memory stick like Apple do with their Mac Airs etc? It's an elegant solution that really works, and takes up no space on the machine. Crazy.

Apple no longer does this. Instead, the recovery function is built into the EFI. With a freshly wiped drive you can log onto Apple's servers, enter your Apple ID and download and install the latest version of OSX onto your machine. If you kept the OSX download before installing, you can extract the ISO and transfer to a usb stick for future use. Each fresh install creates the recovery partition on your machine (about 600MB) if it is not there. The recovery partition also contains maintenance and troubleshooting utilities so is worth having.

It is an elegant solution which means you only need a decent internet connection to fix any recent Apple computer. It does mean the vendor's having to make the bandwidth available. Apple charges for its hardware, Microsoft didn't until this batch of Win 8 tablets.