ah, consistency

Gizmodo's Gary Cutlack:

"The standard Windows 8 Surface tablets came in for some stick, thanks to the Windows files eating up 13GB of hard drive space. That's nothing compared to Windows 8 Pro, which requires an astonishing 45GB of the Surface Pro's disk space for its files. The numbers, obtained from Microsoft by Softpedia, would make an absolute mockery of the 64GB version of the Surface Pro tablet if replicated there, with the machine possibly only having 19GB of space for users to use if Windows 8 eats up a similar chunk of drive space on the more affordable Pro option."

About four posts ahead of that one, Gizmodo's Leslie Horn:

"Unlike the heady days of 2007, your music and movies and Don't Trust the B— downloads live in the cloud now, not on your device. That's where Apple and everyone else has been pushing people for years, precisely because gigundo-storage devices are expensive and absurd and absurdly expensive for the common man."

So in other words, local storage isn't important, unless it can be used as an excuse to engage in Gizmodo's typical anti-Microsoft ax-grinding.

Update:  In case this weren't clear, this is a topic on which I can reliably be expected to be irrational. So.