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Comment by Negitivefrags | Hacker News Reader

> When people buy a tablet they don't have that expectation.

Well perhaps they should have that expectation, because the reality is no different on Apple phones or tablets.

My 16GB iPhone should have 15.25GB of space (16 billion bytes), but it doesn't. It's formatted capacity is 13.7 GB.

I disagree, desktops and tablets should advertise their usable space. The true drive space should still be available on the spec sheet, but usable space should be the main highlight.

Yes, they should do that.

The reality is that they don't and tablets and phones are no better though.

And home broadband providers should advertise their contention rates. And, if that starter is free with the main course, I'll just have the starter free on its own please.

Disk space has a history of misleading sizing, with 1 "MB" often meaning 1000 KiB, and 1 "GB" seeming to mean any combination of decimal and binary multipliers between 1GB and 1GiB (Including 1000 "MB", which might itself be something between 1 MB and 1 MiB).

Given that mess, I can't see the marketeers taking the trouble to distinguish between total and free space. The first company to honestly advertise the space on their device in the manner you describe will miss out on sales due to poorly written (or poorly understood) comparison tables.

Can I add to that and say that the device should also carry a price tag that reflects what will come out my pocket. That happens where I live, but I went to San Francisco recently and when buying found that the price tag excludes tax. What? What's the price tag for then? Make the writing on the label reflect what I give and what I get.

Unfortunately, not displaying the customer's actual cost until the point of purchase is an annoying Americanism that applies to almost every financial transaction.

Surely there is an advantage in being the company that says $100. No additional taxes, no add ons, no surprises. Plenty of companies here and in other countries keep retail costs flat across a market despite the cost of a sale fluctuating. Maybe I ask too much.

As an American consumer, I don't find this confusing; taxes change even among individual small cities, and they can change multiple times per year. The taxes really have nothing to do with my actual purchase: it feels more like a payment processing fee, a "cost of living". Yes: I realize that as a non-American consumer this sounds insane. People have different expectations and subtle details can change opinions; I pretty much never hear an American complaining, however, that they didn't realize there was a tax on something.

That's still greater than the 35% of space a 64gb surface pro gives you...

Sure, but with USB 3.0 getting similar speeds to the internal SSD (according to Anandtech) I can add another 64gb to my surface pro for 30 bucks! Try doing that on an iPad.

Well sure, except 1) I don't need to because iOS doesn't waste as much space; and 2) That's a whole separate partition with a separate set of data to manage/lose, and a new USB drive to have sticking out of your Surface all the time, unplugging and putting away when you pack it up and pulling it out and plugging it in when you're looking to do work.

Personally, I wouldn't want a 'tablet' with a USB drive sticking out two inches all the time.

Good thing it has a MicroSD slot also, then.

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