[mythtv-users] seagate giving refunds out

[Steve Hodge]

On 11/3/07, Nick Morrott <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is it reasonable to expect Joe Public to know the difference between
> decimal and binary capacity representations? Probably not.


If Joe Public don't know the difference they would surely assume that "giga"
and "mega" would have the standard (decimal) meanings, would they not?

IMO storage media manufacturers don't help to bring clarity to the
> proceedings by continuing to use two different systems to state media
> capacity. If I buy:
>
> i) a 500GB drive, it has 500,000,000,000 bytes (465GiB)
> ii) a 1GB stick of RAM, it has 1,073,741,824 bytes (1GiB)
> iii) a 700MB CD-RW, it has 734,003,200 bytes (700MiB)
> iv) a 4.7GB DVD+R, it has 4,700,000,000 bytes (4.37GiB)



> I think it's reasonable that Joe Public should be able to compare
> apples with apples, and not have to worry about GiBs. I understand the
> difference. I doubt my grandad does.


GHz, Km. Your granddad would most likely expect 500GB to mean 500 billion
bytes. The only people who have a complaint here are people who are already
aware that some parts of the computer industry have redefined those prefixes
to suit themselves. And those people should know better - if they know there
are inconsistencies between definitions then they should be on the lookout.
It's hardly false advertising when a vendor uses the correct definition of a
term.

Cheers,
Steve
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