The entire point of recovery partitions is that you can fix the computer without hunting around for media, and if your computer is working enough to download something you probably don't need it.
Couldn't they have an extremely minimal recovery partition that gets you to a device with functional WiFi, then let the download handle the rest? There's no reason for an entire Windows and Office installation to remain dormant "just in case".
You can do that yourself, if you want. It's a feature that you can repair and restore the Surface Pro very easily. You can save 20GB if you are willing to make it harder for yourself. If you copy the 20GB restore partition to a microSD card, maybe not that much harder....
Right. But the vast majority of users will likely never make an effort to remove the recovery partition, and even if somebody wanted to restore their system 6 months or a year from now, they're going to be restoring something that's certainly out-of-date and that requires additional over-the-air updates.
I understand all of the arguments for why they chose what they did. It just seems like the wrong choice given the huge disparity with the marketed capacity that appears on the box.
