The Verge reports, that the 64GB/128GB version of the Surface Pro out of the box offer 23GB/83GB of free for use space respectively, so 41/45GB are already in use by the OS/ built in aps / recovery partition. This has been confirmed by a MS spokesman.

Some of the space can be freed up by deleting the recovery partition, but MS recommends to create a bootable backup on a USB storage device in that case.

link

I know several people have shown interest in the Surface Pro on this site, will you rather go with the 128GB now?

23GB free? as opposed to 83GB 64GBtotal storage.

Damn Microsoft. You really are trying to dig a hole for your coffin aren't you?

no, the 64GB has 23GB of free space and the 128GB has 83GB is what I meant in the OP

Holy shit only 23GB? I'm not sure even my laptop took that much space out of the box.

I'd rather go with the 128GB version, but I'm waiting out on other OS platforms, MWC end of february should bring a lot of new Android and Surface tablets from manufacturers.

How many gigs can you free ?

23 gigs of user space is pretty damn awful :(

I'm incredibly annoyed with this business practice and will look into reporting it as false advertising. It's bad enough when you lose a gig or two, but when 64% is "missing" that's ridiculous.

Only 23GB out of 64gb ?

Hope storage cards are not too expensive.

Well I don't get why they need so much space for apps and OS.

and the hole gets bigger