Microsoft, Best Buy NYC Planning Midnight Surface Pro Launch Event

Looking to go Pro? As in, Surface Pro? You'll have your chance to purchase Microsoft's high-powered tablet beginning February 9, 2013, when Surface Pro goes on sale to the general public starting at $899, but you won't be the first. Select guests have been invited to an evening reception and midnight launch event at Best Buy in Union Square in New York City.

It's unclear who exactly Microsoft and Best Buy invited to the event, though according to ZDNet, it's meant for people in the press. All that's revealed on the invitation is that Microsoft's General Manager of Surface Team, Panos Panay, will be there, along with certain members of the Windows team.


Microsoft is hoping its Surface Pro will prove a game changer in the tablet space. Unlike the iPad and all the Android slates on the market, Surface Pro sports a potent x86 foundation and is well equipped to run modern and legacy Windows applications. It's more of a hybrid convertible than a traditional tablet.

One possible issue with Surface Pro is the amount of space Windows 8 consumes out of the box. Along with pre-installed apps and a recovery partition, the 64GB Surface Pro leaves users with 23GB of available space to play with, while the 128GB model leaves users with 83GB, a revelation that seems to have caught the Internet off-guard.

At the same time, that's really par for course for a Windows-based system, and users can free up space by nuking the recovery partition and uninstalling unwanted apps. Microsoft also bundles 7GB of free storage space in the cloud through SkyDrive. If additional storage is still needed, users can take advantage of Surface Pro's USB 3.0 port and microSDXC card slot.