Lawyer sues Microsoft over Surface tablet storage
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A California lawyer is suing Microsoft, claiming the Surface tablet he bought doesn't have all the storage space the company advertised.
Andrew Sokolowski says he bought a Surface with 32 gigabytes of storage last week. But he quickly ran out of space after loading it with music and Microsoft Word documents.
He discovered that half of the 32GB storage space was being used by the operating system and pre-installed apps.
Sokolowski filed the suit Tuesday at the Superior Court in Los Angeles. He is seeking class action status.
Microsoft says on its website that the 32GB Surface has 16GB of free space while the 64GB version has 45GB free.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Andrew Sokolowski says he bought a Surface with 32 gigabytes of storage last week. But he quickly ran out of space after loading it with music and Microsoft Word documents.
He discovered that half of the 32GB storage space was being used by the operating system and pre-installed apps.
Sokolowski filed the suit Tuesday at the Superior Court in Los Angeles. He is seeking class action status.
Microsoft says on its website that the 32GB Surface has 16GB of free space while the 64GB version has 45GB free.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
'But he quickly ran out of space after loading it with music and Microsoft Word documents.' Well there you go then. As a lawyer, he should have read the fine print. And for another, he turned it into a really expensive mp3 player by loading on about 8000 songs, along with a boat load of word documents. These all take up space. Duh!
While your at it sue the drive manufactures for stating that a gigabyte is 1000 mega bytes. When a gigabyte is really 1024 megabytes. When you format the drive you will have even less space do to the overhead of the formatting sue them for that too.
Who would want one anyway...
I played around with the surface rt while waiting for my iPad to be shipped. Initially I was happy to hear that it came with 32 gigs for th base model. I thought that maybe ms would set the trend for having 32 gig as the minimum for tablets ( evn though ms tries to downplay the tablet portion of the surface). Well I found out that the os itself takes 12 gigs of that 32....so I. Was not very impressed. That along with many other issues prompted me to return it....they need to find tune it better... As much as I disliked the surface rt I was hoping it would sell well and create some decent competition for apple in ths market. It's good to see ms take a diff approach than android but its not really gaining any momentum as far as I can tell ....
I played around with the surface rt while waiting for my iPad to be shipped. Initially I was happy to hear that it came with 32 gigs for th base model. I thought that maybe ms would set the trend for having 32 gig as the minimum for tablets ( evn though ms tries to downplay the tablet portion of the surface). Well I found out that the os itself takes 12 gigs of that 32....so I. Was not very impressed. That along with many other issues prompted me to return it....they need to find tune it better... As much as I disliked the surface rt I was hoping it would sell well and create some decent competition for apple in ths market. It's good to see ms take a diff approach than android but its not really gaining any momentum as far as I can tell ....
A lawyer suing! There's a surprise.
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Mr. Sokolowski, are you aware that you have a fool for a client?
There is an old joke in tech circles.
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That which Intel gives you, Microsoft takes away.
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I.e. Intel gives you a faster chip; Microsoft finds ways to slow it down. More RAM, good the new Windows OS will need it. Hope you get more storage because that too will get eaten up.
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Why it takes more than a gig of space for an OS is beyond me. There was a time when there was not that much space on a drive let alone enough to waste on a bloated OS.
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There is a Linux called Damn Small Linux that can be put entirely (with plenty of space) on a CD. It is 50 Megs.
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 @Repoman yeah I seen the "Damn Small Linux" Funny though something is off because I have a 40 gig HDD and it was showing only 2 gigs of it used a relatively small foot print. I would think at least 40 gigs, would be a minimum. for storage, if that, I would say that 80 gigs is more needed even Acer sold there tiny Net books with an 80 gig drive. So I would surmise larger storage.would be preferable, also it could be that the installation media is taking up a great deal of room as well. this would be needed to re-set to factory default. What I think needs to be done is have the OS restore on a separate chip and the main storage separated. this would solve both issues . 1 losing the OS if one so decides to use something like Linux, If even possible on those tabs, and 2 free up more storage.but then what Do I know, Sony only did this with the PS3, they how ever abused the updates... and abused flashing the ROM and thus would cause the system to break from time to time and then have to fork over 150 for repairs.
 @lee986321Â
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Storing the OS on separate hardware would be great, except in small devices where there is limited room, a separate storage would be unlikely. But it would solve two issues. First it would solve this issue above where the purchaser thinks they should get "32gigs" and second if there was a hardware failure of the OS drive, the data would not be lost.
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But putting backups locally, having a partition with a "recovery" as part of it and a bunch of space eaten up to make sure the boot sector is fully covered are just wastes of space.
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If your OS fails it is likely from a hardware failure and eating up 10% of the drive to save backups that aren't useful is a waste of space.
Class action status? Give me a break. Just take it back and tell the you aren't happy with it. They will refund your money.
 @RalphCramden No this falls under truth in advertising, I think MS failed to adress 1 key point. the amount of space used . when we go to the store with the intention of buying a PC that comes with a 500 gig HDD, we expect the OS to take a small fraction of it. it says that on the box. in this case, I think MS Fogrgot to do that. and in turn stepped in some Fodder for forgetting.. Gese MS has been sued a lot of late..Every one is suing them. Sued for the Metro, sued for this sued for that. eerg.
 @lee986321  @RalphCramden "Microsoft says on its website that the 32GB Surface has 16GB of free space while the 64GB version has 45GB free."
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Guy is screwed.
 @brendan  @lee986321Â
When they say it has X amount of memory and it has that amount then there isn't much he can do. Overheard does take up a certain amount memory which is life in the computer age. In fact overhead is expected and he should have done his homework before buying and gone with the larger model.