The Microsoft Surface RT is now available on pre-order with prices in line with the iPad, starting at $499 for the 32GB base model. In fact is offers more capacity than the iPad which has only 16GB on its base model. Some of you maybe wondering why there is no 16GB model of the Microsoft Surface, and the Microsoft Surface Team actually have an answer for that.Windows RT comes with Microsoft Office 2013 RT and the combination of the operating system and office suite take up a huge 12GB of storage space, according to Ricardo Lopez, a test manager on the Microsoft Surface team. This would leave a user with a 32GB Surface tablet, with around 20GB of free space for their own apps.
This explains why Microsoft cannot successfully market a 16GB variant of the Surface, which would hypothetically leave the user with only 4GB of free space.
It is quite frustrating when you realize that this information wasn’t freely available until the Surface was made available on pre-order.
source – Microsoft Surface Team