Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is being sued by a California man because his new Microsoft Surface tablet has less available storage than advertised.
Andrew Sokolowski purchased a 32-gigabyte Surface on Nov. 7 only to discover that the storage available to him was about 16GB. The rest of the space was taken by the device’s operating system and the pre-installed applications, including Microsoft Office.
The suit, alleging false advertising and bad business practices on Microsoft’s part, is seeking class action status. It also seeks to force Microsoft to alter how it sells the device and to return revenue earned from Surface sales.
In a statement, Microsoft claimed the suit is without merit. It also stated that customers know that some of the space available is taken by the operating system and pre-installed software. Microsoft did confirm earlier that significant space is taken up by pre-installed software. For a 32GB Surface about 16GB is available, and for a 64GB Surface about 45GB is available.
The roughly 50% storage loss for the 32GB Surface is in contrast to the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad’s approximately 11% loss for all three versions (16GB, 32GB and 64GB). That’s not entirely apples-to-apples, though, because the Surface comes with a spreadsheet and word processor, which the iPad lacks.
