Microsoft is being sued for false advertising of Surface tablet’s internal storage

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ayanavish

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If you purchased a 32GB tablet, I'm sure you weren't expecting exactly 32GB to store all your music, photos, and files. But I'm also sure you were expecting it to at least be around the neighborhood of 32GB. Maybe 30GB -- 28GB even. What if you were only get half of that? Yes, that means 16GB for a "32GB" tablet. Would you be upset? I'm sure I would, and one Microsoft Surface customer is so upset that he's decided to sue the company for misleading customers.

Andrew Sokolowski, who is a lawyer himself, has filed a lawsuit in California against Microsoft after running out of space on his Surface tablet. As dotTech reported earlier, while Microsoft is marketing these tablets as having storage capacities of 32GB and 64GB, the real-world amount is significantly less.

This is less of a problem on the 64GB, arguably, as the operating system takes up around 16GB -- leaving the remaining 48GB for user consumption. But on the 32GB tablet, you're left with only half of what you were seemingly promised. If Microsoft knows that the operating system would take up that much space, is it really right to still market it as a 32GB tablet when what you get is actually nowhere near that? If the PC industry trend is to be followed, then, yes, Microsoft is safe in doing so -- this is an accepted practice for traditional computing and has been for years. However, we aren't dealing with PCs here so what goes on in the PC world may not necessarily apply to tablets.

It should also be noted that Microsoft updated their website in early November (about a week after the tablets went on sale) to clarify how much free storage space actually comes with the Surface tablets. So how far Sokolowski's legal attack will go is a toss-up. Still, from the standpoint of a consumer, it definitely is a bummer to get half of what you were expecting.

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/11/15/microsoft-sued-for-surface-storage-space/
Microsoft is being sued for false advertising of Surface tablet’s internal storage space | dotTech
 
I noticed this when I tried the Surface. While it is a known fact that the OS does take up a considerable chunk of space, in the context of a reduced overall storage, it does look bad.
 
I so wish someone would sue Sony too - for the highly misleading Xperia Tipo ads claiming that they have 52GB memory, while in fact the fine print shows 50GB to be Box.com cloud storage.
 
The guy is an idiot. It is clearly mentioned on the box that the available space will be lesser and the terms mention the actual amount of space. And he could have used a 25 bucks sd card to increase the memory by another 32 gigs.

It is amazing how far people will go to get cheap publicity..!
 
The guy is an idiot. It is clearly mentioned on the box that the available space will be lesser and the terms mention the actual amount of space. And he could have used a 25 bucks sd card to increase the memory by another 32 gigs.

It is amazing how far people will go to get cheap publicity..!

Well actually i think what he has done is right. These marketing strategies should be stopped. Maybe technologically intelligent people like you and me would know this beforehand but what if people like my father were to go and buy these tablets. What is the need to show that it actually is a 32GB tablet but has user available space as 16GB only. Cant they just show that it is 16GB only as that is what will be usable by the end user.
 
So true, even in xperia u and p they advertise 8gb and 16gb whereas the usable memory is 4gb and 11gb respectively
I so wish someone would sue Sony too - for the highly misleading Xperia Tipo ads claiming that they have 52GB memory, while in fact the fine print shows 50GB to be Box.com cloud storage.
 
Its not about the fine print. Just dirty marketing tricks, if they know it leaves 16gb then say so. It is not same as PC market where in I buy 500GB HDD and get 475GB for usage. By comparison I still have enough of space. Yes, if anyone of us had bought 500GB PC only to get 250GB out of it, they will be surely pissed.

Edit: Reminds me of an old ebay scam. People were selling usbs with firmware which faked 4-8GB but had only 256MB in them,
 
Of course it's dirty tactics and should be sued, they are not sued enough IMO. Which makes it equally important to read all the terms I guess to be safe.

I mean you wouldn't buy anything off EBay w/o going through the Item Description right?

It's a shame customers ppl put their trust in reputed companies' products and get conned in return.
 
Apple or for that matter any other manufacturer of Phones/Tablets and computers could also be sued on the same lines. No mobile or desktop computing device today explicitly advertises about space available to the user. It is a general assumption that the OS shares the same space. To Microsoft's credit, they even put a warning label on the retail boxes to inform the buyer appropriately. In any case, I don't think anything would come out of such cases.
 
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