Apple, Microsoft: Why say 128 GB, when it is not?

BANGALORE, INDIA: What do Microsoft Surface Pro and Apple iPad 4 tablets have in common?

Option 1: Storage: 128 GB of internal storage

Option 2: Same month of launch: February 2013

Option 3: Price: About $1000

Option 4: All

Before, someone breathes, 'All', breathe (think) again. Agreed, they share the same month of launch, with iPad slotted for February 5 and Surface four days later on February 9, and they also are more or less priced around 1000.

However, when it comes to their internal storage, despite they being marketed by their respective owners as devices with 128 GB of internal storage space, that is not the case.

Microsoft itself, on its website, clarifies that 32GB version of their Surface tablet has 16GB of free space, while the 64 GB version has 45 GB free.

However, as per a report on The Verge, while the 64GB version of Microsoft Surface Pro, priced at $899 sans the keyboard cover, will have only 23GB of usable storage, whereas, its 128GB variant, priced at $999, will have just 83GB of free storage.

Apparently, 45GB space in the Surface Pro model is used up for operating system, Windows 8, and the pre-installed software, built-in apps, and recovery partition. It also adds that users can free up additional storage by creating a separate backup bootable USB and deleting recovery partition.

Now, coming to iPad 4, it will also not have 128 GB for its users to use because Apple follows decimal system of calculating storage space. The iPad maker, on its website, says '1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less'.

This is because decimal value differs from that of the binary system's by a few amount.

1 GB = 1024 MB in binary, where the same is 1000 MB in decimal system.

Though, the difference seems very minute it does make a difference when the space that you are calculating is more than 100GB.

So at any given point, 128 GB cannot be more than 118 GB and now given that operating systems and certain built-in applications are pre installed in any device, that will again account for a few more GB of storage space.

However, at this point, we are not in a position to say how much will be actual storage space inside the iPad 4 for its user to avail, it seems likely that it will be a little more that its Microsoft counterpart.

And, if you still doubt, then try to save 100 DVD quality movies, 30 BluRay quality movies, 30,000 music tracks and 40,000 photos and if you succeed then yes, your tablet has 128 GB of storage, as per a tweet from KRCS Merry Hill, or else you have to believe what we say.

What so ever, it is high time that device manufacturers quote the actual amount of space, instead of playing around the binary and decimal systems and take for granted that users are aware of the OS and application part as well.