Hasta La Gadget!

On its launch day, the Microsoft Surface Pro has been announced as “sold-out”. There were the occasional lines in front of Microsoft stores, and it wasn’t hard to find excited customers on the web. However, it is just impossible to tell at this point if the fact that it is sold-out is the result of high-demand, or short-supply. Overall, I really see why a certain crowd of ultra-mobile users would want one: it is a real PC, yet has a smaller footprint than 11″ laptops and weigh only 2 lbs, which is about 0.5 lbs more than an iPad. Others people complain that the Surface Pro has too little storage (83GB of actual user storage after accounting for pre-installed software and OS on the 128GB version, there’s a 64GB version with about 30GB left for the user), or that the battery life is too low (we estimated it to be 6h at best, and half that for watching online movies). If you are still on the fence, I would recommend reading our surface pro complete review, and form your own opinion based on our real-world usage. Weeks from now, we will know what “sold out” really meant. If you look in the past, the Surface RT was also “sold out” initially, but Microsoft said later that its start was rather modest, so take the hype with a grain of salt.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Surface Pro Photoshop Support: Status Update, Including The iPad, Report Claims Apple Owns 20.1% Of The PC Market,

This week we’re hearing quite a few responses from the public on their surprise at the amount of actual usable hard drive space on the new Microsoft Surface Pro. While the standard ways to free up the space taken up by apps, photos, and videos that you don’t necessarily need, there’s also a slightly more dangerous route you might take. One of the largest space-users on the Microsoft Surface Pro (see our full review here) is the Windows 8 on-board recovery partition.

If you’re going to be wanting to delete this bit of code, you should know right away: if you do delete it and your computer crashes (in any of a variety of different ways), you could potentially have a completely bricked machine. The nice thing about Windows 8 is that you’re free to create a backup bootable USB stick with great ease. Once you’ve got a recovery USB stick, you’ve only to start your machine up holding down the volume button to boot into advanced options and recover from there.

Creating a bootable recovery USB stick is easy in Windows 8: you’ll first need a USB stick that’s at least 256 MB in size. After you’ve inserted that USB into your Surface Pro, you’ll want to press your Windows Key and your “R” key at the same time, then type RecoveryDrive.exe – you could also open your Control Panel and click or tap on the “Recovery” icon, from there you’ll see an option to Create a Recovery Drive. If at this point you’re prompted by UAC, you’ll want to click or tap on “Yes.”

From that point on, creating a USB recovery drive is self-explanatory : the guide screens will make it quite simple for you. The one other thing you’ll want to make sure you’ve done before a final push to the USB stick is to empty out the USB stick itself – if you’ve got anything on there you want to keep, of course.

The actual deleting of the partition that takes up a chunk of your internal storage for recovery is extremely similar to what you’d have done in previous versions of Windows. You’ll find Computer Management under settings, click or tap Control Panel, System and Security, Administrative Tools, and finally “Computer Management.” You may have to type in your administrator password at this point if you have one.

After that you’ll go to Storage (in the left pane) and click Disk Management. This screen is where you’ll be doing the most damage if you’ve not already created a USB recovery partition. If you delete the partition reserved for recovery at this point and lose your USB stick, you may very well be up a river without a paddle should your Surface Pro catch a bad bit of crash action.

Basically what we’re saying here is that you’re better off working with alternate storage options while this bit of space continues to be taken up by the Microsoft-added recovery. It’s there for a reason, and that reason is a good one. Stay safe!

PSA: How to free up space on your Microsoft Surface Pro is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft’s $999 128GB Surface Pro has sold out in the online Microsoft Store in the U.S. (via WinBeta), just a few hours after going on sale today, February 9. The 64GB version is still available as of this writing, and the Surface Pro is still likely in stock at physical retail locations like Best Buy, where it also went on sale today, although checking the stock levels via their online tool reports the Surface Pro as “Unavailable” across the board.

The Surface Pro is Microsoft’s more powerful, Intel-powered Windows 8 tablet, which runs the full version of Windows 8 unlike the Surface RT and can handle full-fledged Windows desktop applications. In the TC review, John Biggs said that the Pro was a much more compelling device than the RT, in part because of its ability to run software that enterprise IT departments depend upon from legacy windows installations.

The Surface RT sold out of the $500 32GB model within one day, but the Pro’s more expensive model has sold out even faster. That could indicate that users are placing a higher value on storage with the Pro, which is marketed as a device much more suited to getting serious work done than the Surface RT. The 64GB model remains in stock for now, and given that there’s only $100 price difference to trade up to double the storage capacity with the 128GB version, that’s not surprising.

Storage was recently the subject of a number of back-and-forth reports regarding the Surface, with some claiming Microsoft left little room on-device for personal files once you accounted for the Windows 8 OS install. Ed Bott reported earlier todays on the actual storage numbers, which beat the original estimates by a fair amount, but the free space on the 64GB version still represents a 200 percent increase from the actual usable space on the base Surface Pro model.

The 128GB Surface Pro is still available to order from the Microsoft Store online in Canada as of this publication date, and you may still be able to grab one by visiting a physical retail location.

Microsoft‘s launch event for the Surface Pro in New York City has been cancelled due to the impending snowstorm “Nemo” that is said to bring around a foot of snow to the city. Microsoft had plans to hold the event at Best Buy in the Union Square section of Manhattan. However, it looks like the tablet will release in stores without a reception.

Microsoft’s head of the Surface division, Panos Panay, tweeted that he would personally not be able to make it to New York City because of the snowstorm, and Neowin has confirmed that Microsoft has cancelled the event altogether, but the tablet will likely go on sale anyway at retail stores and online.

So far, at least 3,800 flights to New York City have been cancelled, with the possibility of even more to be cancelled later on. All public transportation has also been shut down in Boston, and in Rhode Island, non-essential state employees have been sent home by the governor. While the storm has yet to hit at full capacity, it looks like it’s going to be a big one.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro is the second Surface tablet that the company is releasing. They initially released the Surface RT back in October, which comes with a modified version of Windows 8, while the new Surface Pro comes with a full version of Windows 8, as well as better display and 128GB of storage.

[via Neowin]

Microsoft’s Surface Pro launch event cancelled due to snowstorm “Nemo” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you thought the Surface Pro was great, but only if Microsoft decided to shave a few inches off and make the tablet more “mini”, you may be in luck. Though the Microsoft Surface RT and the Surface Pro are going to be the mainstay units for the Windows 8 and Windows RT operating systems for some time to come, it’s been made clear by the company this week that different display sizes are a possibility. At this point it’s just a matter of time.

We’ve had our own up close and personal looks at the Microsoft Surface RT as well as the Microsoft Surface Pro in the past few weeks, and it was only after our review of the Pro model that we found ourselves comparing and contrasting with the MacBook Air. What’s being suggested this week is that it’s not a notebook the public is looking for, but a smaller tablet.

Speaking with Bloomberg about the general ups and downs of the Surface lineup thus far, chief financial officer for Microsoft’s Windows unit Tami Reller noted that the company “will scale over time, but right now we’re focused on making sure the designs that have been built do have commercial availability and commercial success, and we’ll stay focused on that for the short-term.” This of course means that while the company could potentially create a smaller (or larger) tablet in the future, for now they’re putting all efforts into making sure the models they’ve got out at the moment sell well.

With the Google Nexus 7 still running strong after several months of sales straight from the company that pushes the device with Android, it’s no wonder Microsoft wants to keep to itself – so to speak. And while the Nexus 7 dominates the $199 price point, there’s another tablet between here and there that dominates an in-between price point: the iPad mini. While it’s certainly not Microsoft’s goal to dominate the mobile tablet universe with the Surface RT or the Surface Pro, they’ve made it clear this week that they’re going to attempt to stay strong in the standard 10.1-inch size segment for the time being.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see each of the most important recent stories released on the Surface lineup and let us know what you think. Are you ready for a 7-inch Surface tablet – or perhaps an 8.9-inch tablet with another keyboard dock?

Microsoft avoids Surface head-to-head war with Nexus 7 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.