7.8 GB recoverable recovery 
       3.3 GM hibernation file
       4.0 GB pagefile
       2.3 GB Office
      10.4 GB Windows + other default apps
    ---------
      27.8 GB

Which seems to indicate that you can recover 27.8 - 10.4 GB, or 17.4 GB. I'd like to see a chart like that for the Air.

The comparison in the article is with the Macbook Air, which is a laptop, not a laptop/tablet hybrid. I think this is instructive, however. My understanding is that there is no hibernation file and pagefile on an iPad. It's not trying to be a laptop. Likewise, there is no recovery partition on the iPad. (And I see very little need of one.)

The Surface Pro is a laptop in a tablet format. It's basically an old stylus tablet PC from the early 2000's done with 2012 technology, capacitative touch, and some design ideas from iPad style tablets layered on top.

Like my old tc1100 stylus tablet PC, you can use it for the same use cases as an iPad. However, there are important differences:

Holding it in bed would be a bit of a stunt. I can do it with my tc1100 if I rest my elbow on the bed and balance the thing along its diagonal through the center of gravity, with the corner resting firmly in my palm, whereas holding the iPad is like holding a book: something I don't have to think too much about. (That said, the iPad is already at the upper limit of what's tenable for me to not notice weight wise.)

Like the old tc1100, I have to be mindful of vents. A total non-issue with the iPad. I don't know what term there would be for this quality, but it's like a magic slab of touchable light. Having to think about vents ruins that.

Like the old tc1100, I would have to be mindful of battery per work session. To give credit where credit is due, the battery on the Surface Pro lasts 2X as long. However, I can put the tc1100 to sleep and hot-swap battery, so one extra battery gives me as much work endurance.

Basically, they're missing three of the essential qualities that make the iPad great as a tablet. I think they would've done better to go whole hog on the tablet/laptop hybrid idea like the IdeaPad Yoga and the Inspiron Duo. By pretending to be a tablet, they're setting up a bunch of expectations that aren't gong to be met. The tablet/hybrid is good enough for occasionally folding up as a tablet and passing around at a meeting, and doesn't seem to carry expectations beyond that.

Also, what benefit is there to be had from a tablet/laptop hybrid that I couldn't get from an "ultrabook" laptop with an 8.9" tablet? Instead of one device that's mediocre as a tablet and a laptop, I could have two devices that are great in each situation, for little additional weight. (For one thing, I could use the hybrid with a Wacom digitizer to do double duty as a poor-man's Cintiq, but that's kind of niche.)

You can't just chop off the page file. Disabling it entirely or reducing it significantly can and will affect system performance.

That shouldn't be the case. So many linux machines are doing fine with swap disabled.

Regardless, there's no reason for hibernation and page file to be different. They can (and should) be the same file.

You are almost right. With enough RAM, a system will work perfectly without swap. There is, however, a small performance penalty. Even with enough RAM, Linux will swap out processes, trying to free memory for use as disk cache. On most cases, this yields performance gains, which would be lost if the swap file is disabled.

What about systems with SSD?

Your argument is seriously "Windows should be Linux"?

For many, this was never an argument, but a wish.

Oh? So where do you put swapped-out pages when you go into hibernation? Or would you first need to defragment your page file contents just to dump RAM contents into it? Or keep a map what pages in the pagefile are swapped out and what are just hibernated RAM and then piece stuff together on wake-up again?

You simply swap out all your memory. There's no technical difference between a hibernated page and a swapped out page - the only difference is that the OS normally prevents certain pages (e.g. kernel pages) from being swapped out to preserve performance.

Linux can write the suspend-to-disk data to the swap partition, and this comment really made me wonder how...

The current state of Virtual Memory is RAM + pagefile/swap partition. The hibernate file would be used to restore just the RAM. You still need the additional pagefile/swap partition to completely come back to that state once you wakeup.