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Surface Owner Sues Microsoft over Storage Space Claims

An attorney from California has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for false advertising related to the new Surface RT tablet. The man bought a 32GB model, but discovered it really only had 16GB of free space, because the rest was taken up by the operating system and pre-installed software. Ryan Nakashima with the Associated Press […]

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Cynthia Harvey

Nov 16, 2012

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An attorney from California has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for false advertising related to the new Surface RT tablet. The man bought a 32GB model, but discovered it really only had 16GB of free space, because the rest was taken up by the operating system and pre-installed software.

Ryan Nakashima with the Associated Press reported, “A California lawyer is suing Microsoft Corp., claiming the Surface tablet he bought doesn’t have all the storage space the company advertised. Andrew Sokolowski, a lawyer in Los Angeles, claims that 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 a significant portion of the 32 GB storage space was being used by the operating system and pre-installed apps such as Word and Excel. Only 16 GB was available for him to use.”

ITProPortal’s Chloe Albanesius wrote, “‘Mr. Sokolowski’s lawsuit against Microsoft is about protecting consumers as we head into the holiday shopping season,’ Sokolowski’s lawyer, Rhett Francisco, announced in a statement. ‘Microsoft is misrepresenting the storage capacity and capabilities of its Surface tablet, and consumers should know about it.’ Francisco said Sokolowski is not asking for damages. ‘We have only asked that Microsoft correct its unlawful practices by providing consumers with notice of the true characteristics of the Surface tablets and that Microsoft refund profits from sales it obtained as a result of misrepresenting the characteristics of its Surface tablets.'”

TGDaily quoted a Microsoft spokesperson, who claimed the suit was baseless and said, “Customers understand the operating system and pre-installed applications reside on the device’s internal storage thereby reducing the total free space.”

InformationWeek’s Paul McDougall noted, “The lawsuit is the latest headache for Microsoft when it comes to Surface and Windows 8 tablets in general. A source said the company’s sales reps are unhappy that a more business-friendly version of Surface, known as Surface Pro, won’t be available until later this year or early next year.”