How many average users will know how to remove a recovery partition or even know of its existence. Very few.
No, you don't. The 64GB MBA Air I bought was using not even close to the 40GB used on the Pro. (think less than half this).
If you're talking about starting fresh - A clean install of Mountain Lion (6-7GB) consumes less than half the diskspace of Windows 8, so how is your scenario possible?
And so they should. Releasing a product like this to the masses with that amount of diskspace is symptomatic of something seriously wrong at Microsoft if they (like you) think it was Ok for them to do this.
First of all that consumers know to remove the recovery partition isn't the point I'm making, it's still a distortion by the media to get mouse clicks. I understand Microsoft has crappy marketing and they should make this more obvious, or include the recovery on a usb drive, etc etc, but that still doesn't change the fact of how overblown this is. The media (and others) strongly allude that Windows 8 itself takes up 41gb of space and the user has NO choice whatsoever when they receive their surface pro but to ONLY have 23gb of free space, this is blatantly not true and will only perpetuate the issue you yourself have illustrated, that consumers don't know this fact.
As for storage space on a macbook air, a) installing windows on the macbook air, which is what I usually do (not thru bootcamp) we start with 59gb, with windows I'm down to around 48gb. M Lion is specced to take 8 gb (
http://www.apple.com/uk/osx/specs/), so right off the bat you are at 51gb. Windows 8 takes up around 11gb for x64. It's more realistic to assume 45-47gb free. It's easy to see how the media and other users who are espousing this are being quite disingenuous.
I'm not saying Windows is efficient, or that it shouldn't be smaller, I am simply saying we should be more honest about the free hard drive space.
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Lol the Surface Pro is a fail. It is $300-$400 too expensive compared to tablets.
Why would anyone buy a Surface Pro for the same price as a MBA?!?!
I sold my MBA to buy a surface Pro. A 11" 128GB MBA is $1099, versus a 128GB surface Pro with a touch cover is $1099. I'm getting the ability to detach it and use it as a tablet, I'm getting a Wacom digitizer and pen, etc etc. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it just doesn't seem like much rocket science to see why it's priced the way it is. It's not meant to be compared to other tablets, just as much as you wouldn't compare the macbook Air to the ipad, or would you?