Los Angeles-based lawyer Andrew Sokolowski has filed a suit against Microsoft due to the fact the company's Surface RT tablet ships with less free space than advertised. The attorney believes Microsoft intentionally buried details about the actual amount of usable storage out of the box.
Sokolowski said he purchased a 32GB Surface RT tablet last week but ran out of storage space after loading some music and Word files onto it. After a bit of research, he realized that only 16GB of the claimed 32GB was on tap for him to use.
Lawyers representing him (lawyers representing a lawyer, weird, right?) are seeking class action status alleging false advertising and unfair business practices. The suit was filed earlier this week in the Superior Court in Los Angeles with the goal of getting Microsoft to change how they advertise the tablet's capacity.
Microsoft released a statement on the matter saying that customers understand that the operating system and pre-installed applications reside on the device's storage, effectively reducing the total free space. Redmond also pointed out that customers can add additional storage via the microSD card slot or through the USB port.
The company posted a FAQ on their website earlier this month outlining exactly how much free space each capacity tablet ships with. If you missed that post, here's a quick refresher. The 32GB Surface RT has only 16GB of usable space with a fresh install of Windows while the 64GB model ships with 46GB of free space.