Microsoft Sued For 32GB Surface Model Offering 16GB Free

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]blakphoenix[/nom]I for one believe that companies should advertise the FREE space available on devices (that goes for all hdd's, ssd's, phones, tablets, etc). That way consumers can make a more informed choice about how much of their own data they can fit on it. On that basis I hope Microsoft looses and that they have to change their advertising (for all companies).[/citation]

This would be terrible fo HDD and flash drive manufacturers. The "available free space" on them depends on the file system. Format a 8GB flash dreive with NTFS : 7.2GB. ExFAT : 8GB, EXT4 : 7.4GB. BTRFS: 7GB.
So what should the manufacturer claim as the free space ?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]That and windows says GB when it means GiB in windows explorer, confuses people more![/citation]

Anyone who has some understanding in the computer industry can quickly deduce when somebody is meaning binary gigabytes VS decimal gigabytes. Introducing GiB as a new standard doesn't mitigate the ignorance of people who are confused by GB, just adds something else for them to be ignorant of and confused by. Don't pollute scientific notation for those too lazy to keep track of unit types.

 

[dvo]

some of you are saying he should have just read the specs and the 'fine print'. now, maybe i'm remembering wrong, but didn't pre-orders start before it was actually known publicly how much storage was actually used up on the device out of the box? maybe im just remembering wrong... i dunno. correct me if that wasn't the case.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]Azathoth[/nom]Legally, Microsoft is right.Their devices have 32GB of flash storage.However, with such weight of pre-installed applications leaving only 16GB of space that can be used, still advertising the device as 32GB of storage is certainly dishonorable. (Not that corporations have a problem with that.)[/citation]
we are talking Windows, OS backup for redeployment, apps, and office, and it takes only 16GB of space... maybe you are spoiled by the featureless offerings of linux distros that are nice and tiny, but to fit windows alone in under 20GB is nothing short of a miracle, and to include program and backup in less space is really deserving of some kudos to the MS team.

 

[alidan]

i hope this wins...
not on merit of the lawsuit, just because everything will haev to be disclosed to the consumer simply on boxes from now on.

a laptop cant be advertised as 320gb but only have 200 free.
a hdd wont be 1.5tb, but 1.3~
it will make getting crap SO much easier when its in plain english.

 

[shqtth]

Lawsuit about what? he can just take it back to the store and quit bitching if hes not happy.

 

[marcolorenzo]

I think it's also important to note that, as far as I know, MS never advertised that you'll have 32GB free to use when you get a new Surface. They just stated that it'll come equipped with a 32GB HDD which is the absolute truth.

 

[valkain]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]This would be terrible fo HDD and flash drive manufacturers. The "available free space" on them depends on the file system. Format a 8GB flash dreive with NTFS : 7.2GB. ExFAT : 8GB, EXT4 : 7.4GB. BTRFS: 7GB.So what should the manufacturer claim as the free space ?[/citation]

I vote the more information, the better. Just go overkill to cover all legal aspects no matter how stupid. Lets take it to the level of warning labels on hair dryers and bathtubs don't mix.
This will accomplish
1) Excessive amount of information scaring away the ignorant from using things beyond their understanding
or
2) Encourage people to get educated themselves so they know what is relevant to look at and ignore
or
3) do absolutely nothing but confuse lawyer as they look for loopholes.

 

[cbfelterbush]

I find this to be utterly ridiculous. Showcasing how stupid the average American is. This guy above me wants it in "plain English." Incredulous. The max capacity comes from the drive manufacture, that info gets passed along. It has Nothing to do with Microsoft. How large the OS is is irrelevant in this matter. It is a Hardware specification, not software. Ignorant masses.

-CB

 

[lemlo]

If this was on a desktop system or even a laptop or netbook this would be hard to understand. But I agree with this guy. You get an android or ios tablet labled 32gb its gonna have pretty darn near that amount. My tf had around 28gb to play with out of the box, bloatware and all. With this kind of platform and with the mild amount of space there is to deal with people will consider a 32gb device over a 16gb device in many cases. That is why these options exist. 32gb advertising in this case is misleading in my opinion.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]slabbo[/nom]i have a 2TB HDD, after being formatted i get ~1.81 TB usable, so I'm getting 90% of what's advertised, which isn't bad. I think the lawyers is just making the point that with the surface you're getting only 50% of usable space than what's advertised. Average consumers aren't going to know that the surface takes up 16GB and that you're only left with 16GB to use, which I see how people can see it as misleading.What if companies sold 2TB HDDs with 1TB of it being unusable. Do you think they should tell the consumers?[/citation]
Formatting does not take away any space, you are getting exactly the amount you paid for. The size difference comes from the way Windows and HDD makers measure space. To windows one GB is 1024MB but to HDD makers one GB is 1000MB but if you do the math you will see the sizes end up with the amount of space the maker advertised.

 

[martel80]

[citation][nom]w1zz4[/nom]@wemakeourfuture Actually, since 2000, IEEE defined a Gigabyte as 10^9. 2^30 is a Gibibyte (Binary Gigabyte). But yeah everyone still use Gigabyte for 2^30.[/citation]
It's only the disk drives which use a billion instead of 2^30. 2 GB of RAM is not 2 billion bytes. Mixing the two in the spec of a computer is just misleading.

 

[elitemarksman]

[citation][nom]martel80[/nom]It's only the disk drives which use a billion instead of 2^30. 2 GB of RAM is not 2 billion bytes. Mixing the two in the spec of a computer is just misleading.[/citation]



You actually do lose a non-trivial amount of storage when you format a drive. How much is lost varies depending on what format is chosen.

As for this lawsuit, completely without merit. His surface tablet is 100% capable of storing 32 GB (not GiB) of data.

 

[eiskrystal]

Anyone who thinks that losing 50% your drive out of the box is acceptable needs their head examined. If I am advertised 32gb, I expect MOST of that to be available. Not half!!!

You cannot advertise yourself as 32gb when you end up with such a low amount after installation that it literally pushes you into the next bracket down of 16gb.

 

[doive1231]

Of cause this complaint has merit. If you buy one kg of cornflakes and can only eat 1/2 kg then you would be right to question this. When you buy 32GB, you should have the expectation that you personally should be able to use a fair amount of it. 50% is too low and the lawyer should compare it to other OS and installed programs to show this.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]Estix[/nom]Poking around a bit, Andrew Sokolowski was a Senior Attorney at the firm that filed the class action suit over Facebook's IPO, so he's not just someone trying to make a name for himself.While I don't see the suit as having any merit (as the free space on the device is easily-obtained knowledge for anyone who read ANY review of it) I do think that, for a device intended for more serious use cases than angry birds, the Surface could certainly use more storage, especially given the tiny cost it would have added.Besides, Microsoft could have just had it start at 128 GB, and used that as a marketing thing.[/citation]
Well, it has an SD card slot...

 

[zybch]

This is why the surface has that neat microSD card slot.
I have the 64gig surface and have just added a Sandisk 64Gb microSD card fileld with HD movied.
However, even before any data was transferred to the card, it only had 56Gb of space available. WHERES MY 64GB??
With office taking up the best part of a gig, and the recovery tools allowing you to do several bulletproof rollback operations, its no wonder than users aren't getting the 'full' 32Gb of storage. This info is easy to find though, and nobody should be able to sue because they were too stupid to actually read the spec sheet.

 

[dthx]

Is Apple promoting the 128Gb SSD Macbook Air under the name 99.151Gb Macbook Air...
Is Asus marketing the 32Gb Transformer as a 30,123Gb Asus Transformer...
you get the point... that's just common practice in the industry to announce the total storage capacity rather than the amount of available space for the user.
But in these days, absolutely everything has to be written on the boxes especially for consumer products... or you get a lawsuit, and, to be honest, this tablet is a bit unique as I don't know of any consumer device where 50% of the space is already eaten up by the system. No one was expecting that for a "mobile OS". Especially as Windows RT is supposed to be limited and lightweight counterpart of Windows 8 Pro. In fact, it's finally a rather complete system with it's Office suite and decent RDP client. Other tablets look like toys compared to it, but going the iOS way (iOS needs iTunes and an internet connection to perform an OS restore) would have saved MS some valuable flash memory space for the recovery partition. The good news is that Surface has an SD slot...

Hint to MS: give a voucher for a 16Gb MicroSD card to those "i'll sue you" morrons or give them their money back so they can buy a couple of Eclair or Froyo chinese noname 32Gb Android tablet. They'll be happy to see that they still have 15Gb available on those tablets as it's apparently all that matters to them ;-)

 

[belardo]

When you buy a 32GB Android or iOS device... you should have close to 32GB once you remove any demos, bloatware. The OS and standard tools shouldn't suck up 16GB of memory space.

Ah... but you see... the mobile OS platforms are much smaller... vs. the super-bloated Win8 and its required support software.

 

[dthx]

[citation][nom]dthx[/nom]Is Apple promoting the 128Gb SSD Macbook Air under the name 99.151Gb Macbook Air...Is Asus marketing the 32Gb Transformer as a 30,123Gb Asus Transformer...you get the point... that's just common practice in the industry to announce the total storage capacity rather than the amount of available space for the user.But in these days, absolutely everything has to be written on the boxes especially for consumer products... or you get a lawsuit, and, to be honest, this tablet is a bit unique as I don't know of any consumer device where 50% of the space is already eaten up by the system. No one was expecting that for a "mobile OS". Especially as Windows RT is supposed to be limited and lightweight counterpart of Windows 8 Pro. In fact, it's finally a rather complete system with it's Office suite and decent RDP client. Other tablets look like toys compared to it, but going the iOS way (iOS needs iTunes and an internet connection to perform an OS restore) would have saved MS some valuable flash memory space for the recovery partition. The good news is that Surface has an SD slot... Hint to MS: give a voucher for a 16Gb MicroSD card to those "i'll sue you" morrons or give them their money back so they can buy a couple of Eclair or Froyo chinese noname 32Gb Android tablet. They'll be happy to see that they still have 15Gb available on those tablets as it's apparently all that matters to them ;-)[/citation]
oops ... Too fast I meant 31Gb

 

[Concussive]

As they say in America: This guy is a douchebag...

 

[Jarmo]

That is actually a surprisingly hefty preinstall.
With Windows phones (basically the same os) being sold with 8GB and soon 4GB capacities, I would have expected the available space to have been quite some ways larger.

With PC's and HD's, losing something under 10% for the OS is no big deal, but I'd be pretty pissed if I bought a new 2TB HD and after formatting it'd show 1,1 TB free. Or whatever.

 

[southernshark]

The legal field CAN be fixed. But it will require extensive human sacrifice.

 

[Murissokah]

The lawsuit is outright stupid, but I hope this gets them thinking whether its a good idea to pack a mobile device with 16GB of software.

 

[jn77]

Those of us who know about storage know that formated storage is not the same as what is actually there, but when I first started building pc's 20 years ago and you bought a 130mb (mega byte) hard drive and only got 115mb it was a little dissapointing, and in all honesty it is false advertising.....

In big bold type you get 2TB and then in the mickey mouse print...... Formated Cap 1.81TB..... If they are going to advertise a drive as 2TB then it really needs to be 2.25TB or what ever it needs to be to give the user what they are "Selling"