Following ridiculous lawsuit, Microsoft adds disclaimer about storage to its Surface product page

Earlier this month, Microsoft compiled a FAQ page to show how much free space you actually get with the purchase of a Surface computer (16GB free for the 32GB option, and 45GB free for the 64GB option). A week later, Microsoft was sued for burying this information, and in an apparent response to this, the company has added a disclaimer on its Surface product page.

As first spotted by Ed Bott, the Microsoft Store page for the Microsoft Surface now includes the following text:

Surface comes with great software to help you do more. This software uses significant storage. Get important storage details.

The text is in the top-right corner of the page, and the last sentence links to the “Help Me Choose” tab in the bottom which clearly displays the following information:

Here’s how much storage you will have available out of the box⁵:
•The 32 GB Surface with Windows RT has approximately 16 GB storage available for user content.
•The 64 GB Surface with Windows RT has approximately 45 GB storage available for user content.

The superscripted number five explains a bit more and ultimately takes you to the Surface storage page for a full explanation. This is different than the aforementioned FAQ but it largely contains the same information.

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As Bott notes, the change to make the storage details more visible is likely in response to a recent lawsuit, filed on November 14. Andrew Sokolowski, a lawyer in Los Angeles, claims that he bought a Surface with 32GB of storage but quickly ran out of space after loading it with music and Microsoft Word documents.

Rhett Francisco, Sokolowski’s lawyer, said his client never saw Microsoft’s responses and that the details on its site are buried. “They make you search and dig for it specifically, or you would never find it,” he told the Associated Press.

At the time, Microsoft offered a statement saying it believes the suit is without merit. “Customers understand the operating system and pre-installed applications reside on the device’s internal storage thereby reducing the total free space,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

We have contacted Microsoft to find out if it has anything more to add now that it has made the storage details more clear on its site. We will update this article if we hear back.

Image credit: Pawel Kryj