Source: http://www.surfacetablethelp.com/2013/01/surface-prort-stuck-at-boot-up-screen-issues-after-updated.html

I’d be interested to know what full-size commonly used application we can do without. I like to use Paint for basic photo editing, but I can see why some people use the Really complicated tools in Photoshop

Your absolutely right and these instructions will probably be on the first page of the user guide so what’s everyone complaining about??

You are absolutely 100% correct, the company is run by Accountants and Marketing people and situations like this prove this.

We recieved 10 iPads months ago, they’re Still not working because we don’t have the funding for 1 device per user, they have to be shared, and that Doesn’t work nicely in an Enterprise environment where all network actions are supposed to be traceable to a unique user. As a single-user device for a staff member I trust, sure, but as a multi-user device, with some of those users being somewhat random people? It’s getting all Kinds of locks on it, or it’s going to be a huge threat to everyone else.

«The Adobe CS6 suite is something like 20gb installed.»

«The 64GB model will in fact contain just 23GB of useful space»

Uhm…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

Cue more hyperbole in 3..2..1..

In 1993 I had a Compaq Concerto tablet PC running Windows 3.11 on a 386, with detachable keyboard and pen-based handwriting capture, though the handwriting to text part never worked.  Otherwise it worked OK and I did some Internet demos for my nascent ISP with it, back when you had to explain the whole idea of Internet to people.  The Concerto, like so many tablets after it, also sank almost without trace (though with some fond fans for many years after.)

So Rob, you can push that up to 20 years of failed tablets, not 15 years.
[Edited: s/3.13/3.11/]

Bloatware is not software that is bloated – it a a word that refers to a specific type of unnecessary, bundled software (look it up! internet!).

The Surface is, as indicated by the price point, an ultrabook alternative that doubles as a tablet. Comparing it to the ipad is just stupid. Can I run the full Adobe CS on an ipad? Then stfu.

As others have pointed out: the 40gb can be significantly reduced by putting the recovery partition on an external usb stick (I read by ~8gb) and removing Office. Lucky the surface comes with a USB port and micro SD slot to increase the capacity if you really need to ($65 for 64gb on amazon). If people insist on comparing to an ipad, it’s funny how they ignore this.

Finally: Software is growing in size.. are we really surprised? The Adobe CS6 suite is something like 20gb installed. Windows 8 64bit requires 20gb on PCs. Why is everyone so shocked? If you don’t like it buy something else.

To get in before being called a M$ apologist: I am nothing of the sort. I WILL NOT be buying one of these because I have a laptop (legit win7), I have a desktop (illegit win7) and I have a tablet that I am very happy with already (Nexus 7 if you must know) so getting a sort-of-in-between thing that costs too much (like the surface) makes no sense. I just appreciate an objectivity that seems sorely missing from most of the uproar around this.

Edit in reply to Marco:
Your selective quoting of my comment is pretty irrelevant to my point. I run CS4 on my laptop because it’s not spec’d to run anything better. If space is an issue, install an older version. Very few people (if any at all) use the full CS suite. Ever. If someone has the whole thing installed you should ask them how many programs in the suite they’ve used and what each one does. So, yeah… my point remains. You can run any of the CS programs on the surface. You can run NONE of them on ipad.