Microsoft Surface Pro vs. Macbook Air: Free HD Space is Similar, Say Microsoft and Reddit, Amidst Storage Concerns

The Microsoft Surface Pro has been lambasted for it's low storage capacity -- the Windows 8 operating system uses up more than half of the available space on the 64 GB version of the ultrabook/tablet hybrid.

But now Microsoft -- prodded by a Reddit AmA, has clarified that the Surface Pro has more available storage space than it initially thought, and a few independent calculations verify the claim.

"Initial reports out regarding available disk space were conservative (eg. 23GB available on 64GB and 83GB available on the 128GB system), however our final production units are coming in with ~6-7GB additional free space," wrote Microsoft Corporate Vice President Panos Panay and the Surface engineering team on a Reddit AmA earlier this week.

That seemingly small jump in storage space makes the Surface Pro's available HD space nearly equal to the free space on Apple's Macbook Air, the main featherweight competitor to the Surface Pro.

In fact, Ed Bott at ZDNet points out that Windows and OS X calculate storage capacities differently, bringing the two devices even closer into line with each other. "Apple and Microsoft report disk sizes differently," writes Bott. "If you do not take this difference into account, you will not be able to make proper comparisons."

Newer version of OS X report hard drive capacities in base 10, a counting method that results in matched values between advertised and reported capacities. Microsoft still uses base 2, which reports smaller capacities than advertised.

So a hard drive advertised as 250 GB will report that it has 250 GB free on a Mac, and Windows will report about 233 GB free. The device has the same capacity on each operating system; only the reporting method is different.

In addition, both the Surface Pro and the Macbook Air allocate space to a restore or recovery image, which allows the operating system to be reset in case of total failure.

But the Surface Pro also allows the user to save that image on an external drive and erase the original, freeing up more space, which actually results in more available HD space than on the Macbook Air.

"The MacBook Air 128 gives you 77.3 percent of the advertised storage space for user data," Bott sums up. "The Surface Pro 128 gives you 75.2 percent of its advertised capacity for storing data. And with one minor tweak that doesn't affect the system's capabilities in any way, you can increase the amount of data storage space on the Surface Pro to 81.8% of the advertised capacity."