How much memory does a tablet need?

Microsoft's new Surface tablet comes with a minimum of 32Gb of memory storage and this is double what is supplied with the iPad at the same price point. So does this make it twice as good or double the usefulness? Not necessarily. The question is, how much storage space does a tablet need?

I have a Google Nexus 7 with just 8Gb and I have been surprised how little memory I have used. The operating system requires memory to run and I have installed dozens of apps, yet I still have several gigabytes free. Home come?

The reason is that cloud storage is everywhere these days and there is no longer any need to use the device to store movies, music, photos, and other media. It is these files that use up all the space on tablets and by storing them elsewhere and streaming them when you need them, you can manage with very little memory on a tablet.

A computer, or a NAS drive, can act as a DLNA server and there are apps for tablets that turn them into DLNA clients. You run an app on the tablet, it connects to the computer or NAS drive and you can stream all the music or movies to the tablet. On iOS devices of course, there is iTunes library sharing facilities and you can connect to a computer running iTunes and play anything stored on it.

There are a couple of disadvantages and the computer or NAS drive must be running in order to act as a media server. There are some very energy efficient computers that you can leave on all day and NAS drives use little power and are designed to run all day anyway. My computer is always on most of the day because I'm always working on something or other.

The other disadvantage is that if you take your tablet out when you leave home you won't have access to your media. However, it is still possible to connect to a computer at home provided you have a Wi-Fi connection and these are increasingly common. Wi-Fi is everywhere these days.

If you don't want to host your media yourself and leave your computer or NAS drive on all day, there are lots of services that will host your media. Buy your music from Amazon for example, and it will be stored online and you can stream it to your Android tablet from anywhere with an internet connection. There are services like 4Shared and others that let you store media files online and stream them over the internet to your iOS or Android device too.

The main reason Microsoft Surface doesn't come in an 8 or 16Gb version is because the OS and apps take up so much space. I've not tried one yet, but I've heard that there's only 20Gb free on a 32Gb Surface, which means the system uses a massive 12Gb. That's more than the total memory on my Google Nexus 7!

I wouldn't get hung up on the amount of storage a tablet has. Once you get used to storing your media elsewhere and streaming it, you'll find you can manage with a lot less. The are only two differences between a 16Gb iPad and a 64Gb iPad and that is the memory size and the price. If the memory size is not important then you can save yourself a bundle of money. The same is true with Android and Surface tablets. Buy the cheapest and just stream your media.