Microsoft Surface Pro’s 64GB version will come with 23GB of available memory out of the box

For those of you who are getting ready to
shell out $899 for a Microsoft Surface Pro
on February 9, there’s a rather unpleasant
surprise waiting for you. It turns out that
the 64GB version of Microsoft’s über
tablet will come with only 23GB of
available memory out of the box.
The 128GB version of the slate will come
with 83GB of available storage. All in all,
it looks like the Windows 8 OS, together
with the built-in apps and recovery
partition take up a cool 40+ gigs of the
tablet’s built-in memory.
Users of the tablet will be able reclaim
some of the storage space by creating a
bootable USB for recovery. Furthermore,
the slate packs USB 3.0 port and a
microSDXC card slot, so memory
expansion should not be an issue, save
for the added expense associated with
the process.
For a quick comparison, an entry-level,
11″ Apple MacBook Air with 64GB SSD
offers roughly 50GB of available memory.
A 64GB iPad on the other hand, has 57GB
available to the user.
What do you think? Should the 64GB
Microsoft Surface Pro be actually
advertised as such, or is the user-
available memory discrepancy a tad too
high?