Disk Space on Windows 8

Since it was announced, I have planned to purchase a Microsoft Surface Pro.  I was intrigued by the concept of having a tablet that will run all the programs I had on my Windows 7 Laptop. Although I haven't yet seen an announcement from Microsoft, I expect that it will be available for purchase by the end of January.  Could I use the Surface Tablet as my main computer?

My Windows 7 laptop had a 500GB hard drive and it was pretty close to being full.  The most expensive model of the surface was $999  and only had 128GB SSD.  That was a big downgrade from my working environment.  Was it even possible to replace my Lenovo Windows 7 laptop with the Surface?

Windows 8 Pro was available on October 26, 2012 and, on that day, I downloaded it from the Microsoft Store on my journey to find out if it was even possible to get to 128GB from 500GB.  I started by purchasing a 256GB Crucial SSD, installed it in my Lenovo.  I calculated how much disk space I actually needed.   Now less than 60GB - Wow!

Libraries	Current Space (GBs) Windows 7	Required (GBs) Windows 8
Contacts	< 1.0	<1.0
Documents	13.1	1.0
Downloads	8.6	2.0
eBook Libraries	28.1	4.8
Favorites	<1.0	<1.0
Music	108.0	14.1
Pictures	21.0	3.0
Presentations	<1.0	<1.0
Videos	110.0	30.0
Tablet Files	19.6	0
Total Disk Space	311.4	57.9

I then installed all my Windows 7 programs including Microsoft Office, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Microsoft Streets and Trips etc. and copied my 57.9GBs of data.

I have been using Windows 8 Pro for 3 months now and it looks as if a replacing my Windows 7 laptop might actually be possible; from a disk space perspective at least.  I am only using 106GB for everything.