Day 14 – Surface Pro: 64GB or 128GB?
Day 14 – Surface Pro: 64GB or 128GB?
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet
3/24/2013
Welcome to Day 14 of working with a Microsoft Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet for educators. Today I will address the issue of expandable storage options available on the Surface Pro.
3/24/2013
Welcome to Day 14 of working with a Microsoft Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet for educators. Today I will address the issue of expandable storage options available on the Surface Pro.
The ability to have expandable storage space is yet another advantage of the Surface Pro over other tablets on the market. It is also a very convenient way to get student work on and off the tablet.
There have been press reports that 64 GB of storage on the entry model of the Surface Pro is not enough, especially since the operating system takes up a large chunk of it. Many have pointed out that a large portion of the hard drive is consumed by the Windows 8 operating system and recovery partition.
PC World reports that the advertised space of a 64GB Surface Pro, “will only have 23GB available for use out of the box – that’s just under 36% of the advertised capacity”.
Some in the blogosphere have tried to make a big deal out of the storage space issue on the Surface Pro comparing it to the 16GB iPad that has 75% of advertised storage space available. The 16GB iPad has 12GB available storage, about half of the 23GB available on the Surface Pro 64GB model.
What many are missing is that the Surface Pro is really a new class of device and making such comparisons are invalid. Windows 8 and iOS are two completely different operating systems, one a full-featured enterprise class device, the other a consumer level device.
If a comparison need be made it would be more relevant to compare the Surface Pro to the Macbook Air model as Ed Bott has done in the article below.
You can see the results are similar for the amount of advertised space available between the Air and the Surface Pro. The Surface Pro is more of an Ultrabook class device dressed up in a tablet form factor, but it is much more than an Ultrabook. It really is a new class of device as we make the transformation to new touch-centric devices that have the full power of a PC.
So the bickering goes back and forth in the blogosphere about storage availability on the Surface Pro. But, the big story here, the one that most are missing, is that the Surface Pro has a USB 3.0 port that offers essentially unlimited storage capacity.
Think the 128GB SSD hard drive in the Surface Pro is not big enough? No problem, just plug in a 1 Terabyte hard drive into the USB 3.0 port. Is that enough storage for you?
True, it is detachable storage but as I have said before this capability is a huge plus in my daily workflow of working with large video files. Having something stick out the side of the Surface Pro however, is limiting and in a perfect world more internal storage would be preferable.
So, 64GB or 128GB?
More is better in this case and thus we elected to go with the 128 GB Surface Pro, at a cost of $100 more than the 64GB model. The main reason is that I do work with large files regularly and the additional space is warranted. I also plan on installing some full-featured programs that will take up additional disk space.
In addition, the Surface Pro also offers a microSD slot that allows you to add up to 64GB of additional storage. The advantage of the microSD card is that it becomes essentially hidden (does not stick out) and disappears into the Surface Pro.
Since the Surface Pro features full Windows 8 file management capability (it is Windows after all), the microSD card just appears like any other drive would on the Surface Pro in File Explorer. That’s 64GB of “extra” storage space, beyond the internal 128GB SSD drive if you need it.
Until next time...
Keep on Learning,
Keep on Learning,
Tom Grissom, PhD
Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom
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