How many of you remeber the McDonald's lawsuit (actually lawsuits) that never was? For those that don't remeber many times people have considered suing McDonald's over the fact that a Quater-Pounder isn't actually a quarter pound. Hopes were vanguished when someone took the time to point out the footnote--proceeded by an asterisk--that read "pre-cooked weight". Morons.
Well they're at it again. No not trying to sue McDonald's. They're going after PC manufacturers like Apple, Dell, IBM and others.
Read the article at The Register. (http://theregister.co.uk/content/54/32935.html)
I emailed the author in which I mentioned 3 major points.
1. Hard drive sizes are reported by the drive manufacturer. These are then placed in the spec sheets by the PC manufacturers. While IBM does make drives, Apple and Dell do not. There's a little thing in law called the "Real Party in Interest", Bascially it states that in this case you go after the drive manufacturers not the PC manufacturers.
2. Mentioned the McDonald's lawsuit. Then quoted this:
The lawsuit objects to the notation used in describing the capacity of hard disk drives in manufacturers' promotional material. For example, a "20 GB" hard drive would only have 18.6 GB usable capacity, the complaint maintains.
In other words these idiots don't understand that the Pc manufacturers are listing the total capacity of the hard drive. Not what's left after installing the OS and apps.
3. How are the drive sizes determined? There is no "real" industry standard. Some use 1000, while others use the more accurate 1024. How does the OS calculate this? Most drives include notices that there may be variations depending on the OS.
I forgot to include (in the email) that most companies don't like class action suits as they can get quite expensive. So they simply settle. Fortunately enough people will point out the stupidities of this futile quest and spare the world yet another footnote.
JesseJames
09-21-2003, 08:00 PM
I sort of agree with this law suit as the file size can be misleading however now I understand how they get that file size it doesnt bother me now.
The size is normally given in bits so a hard drive labelled as 20gb is actually 20 giga bits but people misread it as 20 giga bytes. This is the same as with internet connection speeds.
I have had several arguments with people who say they have a hard drive that they have formatted but have lost a giga byte of space and want to try and find it. They just dont seem to understand.
tecknophreak
09-21-2003, 08:11 PM
"The size is normally given in bits so a hard drive labelled as 20gb "
Really? Which ones, perhaps which country. All the drives I bought were as gigabytes(as in 1000000000 bytes). So there are 2.5 GigaByte drives?
Don't all drives come out as gigabytes(1000000000 bytes) opposed to the way most OSs consider gigabytes(1024*1024*1024)? Maybe things have changed in the last few years.
El_Cu_Guy
09-21-2003, 08:13 PM
The size is normally given in bits so a hard drive labelled as 20gb is actually 20 giga bits but people misread it as 20 giga bytes. This is the same as with internet connection speeds.
Hard drive sizes are in bytes not bits.
Remeber big B=bytes. 20 gigabits is only 2.5 million bytes or 2.5 gigabytes.
I have had several arguments with people who say they have a hard drive that they have formatted but have lost a giga byte of space and want to try and find it. They just dont seem to understand.
:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
psi42
09-21-2003, 08:17 PM
Originally posted by tecknophreak
Don't all drives come out as gigabytes(1000000000 bytes) opposed to the way most OSs consider gigabytes(1024*1024*1024)? Maybe things have changed in the last few years.
A gigabyte is 2^30 bytes, unless you work for a hard drive manufacturer's marketing department, in which case it is 10^9 bytes.
Show me the OS that things a gigabyte is 10^9 bytes. :)
Yeah, this has always been annoying, but only a sue-happy idiot would make a lawsuit out of it.
~psi42
JesseJames
09-21-2003, 08:21 PM
Well I dont know:p Im not sure exactually. I know they are in bytes and not bits. I was just trying to think why people would use 1000 instead of 1024.. I just thought that people must be using bytes instead of bits because they use 1000 instead of 1024, but I dont do any working out... So why do people use 1000??? It seems stupid to me.
I had what I said in my previous post in my head but I dont know how to put it down in words. I think i made a mess of it.:D
psi42
09-21-2003, 08:26 PM
Originally posted by JesseJames
Well I dont know:p Im not sure exactually. I know they are in bytes and not bits. I was just trying to think why people would use 1000 instead of 1024.. I just thought that people must be using bytes instead of bits because they use 1000 instead of 1024, but I dont do any working out... So why do people use 1000??? It seems stupid to me.
Because a 20 "GB" drive will sell better than an 18.63 GB drive. It's 20 GB *where 1 gigabyte=1 billion bytes.
El_Cu_Guy
09-21-2003, 08:30 PM
1000 or 1024? Read this (http://www.romulus2.com/articles/guides/misc/bitsbytes.shtml)
Now can we get back on topic?
JesseJames
09-21-2003, 08:30 PM
Originally posted by psi42
Because a 20 "GB" drive will sell better than an 18.63 GB drive. It's 20 GB *where 1 gigabyte=1 billion bytes .
There must be some other reason than that. Otherwise its just plain fraud and I am suprized there hasnt been a lawsuit sooner.
psi42
09-21-2003, 08:35 PM
In December 1998, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved a new IEC International Standard. Instead of using the metric prefixes for multiples in binary code, the new IEC standard invented specific prefixes for binary multiples made up of only the first two letters of the metric prefixes and adding the first two letters of the word "binary". Thus, for instance, instead of Kilobyte (KB) or Gigabyte (GB), the new terms would be kibibyte (KiB) or gibibyte (GiB).
Oh, thanks. :(
"Hi everyone, I just bought an 80 gibby-byte hard drive."
AresTheImpaler
09-21-2003, 08:40 PM
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
How many of you remeber the McDonald's lawsuit (actually lawsuits) that never was? For those that don't remeber many times people have considered suing McDonald's over the fact that a Quater-Pounder isn't actually a quarter pound. Hopes were vanguished when someone took the time to point out the footnote--proceeded by an asterisk--that read "pre-cooked weight". Morons.
Well they're at it again. No not trying to sue McDonald's. They're going after PC manufacturers like Apple, Dell, IBM and others.
It is not that bad. They are actually marketing in bad faith. Many do not know the difference and when they say it is 20 GB (or what ever the size is) they dont want to get only about 18.5 GB of real storage.
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
1. Hard drive sizes are reported by the drive manufacturer. These are then placed in the spec sheets by the PC manufacturers. While IBM does make drives, Apple and Dell do not. There's a little thing in law called the "Real Party in Interest", Bascially it states that in this case you go after the drive manufacturers not the PC manufacturers.
IBM, Apple, and Dell could still be in problems since they do know that they are taking advantage of uninformed persons that do not know the difference that a 20GB hard disk is not really a 20 GB of storage space as seen by the operating systems.
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
2. Mentioned the McDonald's lawsuit. Then quoted this:
The lawsuit objects to the notation used in describing the capacity of hard disk drives in manufacturers' promotional material. For example, a "20 GB" hard drive would only have 18.6 GB usable capacity, the complaint maintains.
In other words these idiots don't understand that the Pc manufacturers are listing the total capacity of the hard drive. Not what's left after installing the OS and apps.
I would call them idiots if I were you. The complaint is that the 20GB are in the order of 20*10^9. Because computers use binary, the size of storage a computer will see about that is only 20*2^30. So, a 20 GB hard disk is actually about 18.6 as seen by any operating system.
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
3. How are the drive sizes determined? There is no "real" industry standard. Some use 1000, while others use the more accurate 1024. How does the OS calculate this? Most drives include notices that there may be variations depending on the OS.
they should all use 1024 as their standard since we are talking about computers. unfortunately we don't, as computer companies prefer to use the other form. I do belive that they do it in bad faith since they know must users don't know the difference until it is too late (as they already bought it).
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
I forgot to include (in the email) that most companies don't like class action suits as they can get quite expensive. So they simply settle. Fortunately enough people will point out the stupidities of this futile quest and spare the world yet another footnote.
No one likes class action suits, but maybe this would teach companies they sould not decieve their customers. It is not good to let companies do whatever they want with their customers.
stumbles
09-21-2003, 08:42 PM
Originally posted by JesseJames
out... So why do people use 1000??? It seems stupid to me.
I had what I said in my previous post in my head but I dont know how to put it down in words. I think i made a mess of it.:D
I used to count to 10 starting with 1, then after getting into electorics and computers I was taught 0 really does have a value, try counting to 10 without it.
AresTheImpaler
09-21-2003, 08:45 PM
Originally posted by stumbles
I used to count to 10 starting with 1, then after getting into electorics and computers I was taught 0 really does have a value, try counting to 10 without it.
mmm, I get A
stumbles
09-21-2003, 08:47 PM
[i] So why do people use 1000??? It seems stupid to me.
I had what I said in my previous post in my head but I dont know how to put it down in words. I think i made a mess of it.:D [/B]
Because 1024 (Base 2) is 1000 (Base 10).
AresTheImpaler
09-21-2003, 09:05 PM
Originally posted by stumbles
Because 1024 (Base 2) is 1000 (Base 10).
what? I don't understand that... (it might be that I have been studying too much today)
1000 (base 10) is 11 1110 1000 (base 2)
1024 is not in base 2.
1024 (base 10) is 100 0000 0000 (base 2)
dont se how 1024 can be in base 2... or that a 1024 represntation of base 2 can then be 1000...
stumbles
09-21-2003, 09:11 PM
Originally posted by AresTheImpaler
what? I don't understand that... (it might be that I have been studying too much today)
1000 (base 10) is 11 1110 1000 (base 2)
1024 is not in base 2.
1024 (base 10) is 100 0000 0000 (base 2)
dont se how 1024 can be in base 2... or that a 1024 represntation of base 2 can then be 1000...
Yer right, it ain't in Base 2, dunno what I was thinking. Used to know this stuff but its been so long. Maybe what I was thinking is the 1024 got rounded down by drive marketing people for so long.
bwkaz
09-21-2003, 09:52 PM
El_Cu_Guy: Nice new avatar. ;)
As for why HD manufacturers use 10^9 instead of 2^30, I think it's just because they can make the same drive cheaper.
They say it's a 20-gig drive. So now, they have a choice. They can either make it a 20*2^30 drive, or a 20*10^9 drive. The second one, because there is less space there, is going to be cheaper to make. So, the HD mfr's go with it.
They're just trying to keep their profit margins a bit higher, is my take on it. It's been "the way it is" for years now, and this is the first time anyone has officially complained.
El_Cu_Guy
09-21-2003, 10:26 PM
According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
It's actually a matter of arguing standards. ISO v IEC. Manufacturers use ISO (1000, or GIGAbyte) but the OS uses IEC (1024 or binary or GIBIbyte). However, it reports the results using the ISO standard notation (GIGAbyte). So of course this will make the drive seem smaller. If the result were reported in the IEC standard there would not be any problem. Most drive manufacturers list how they calculate the size (1000 or 1024).
Got it?
Here's what I see the future holds:
*Drive capacity is determined using the ISO standard where 1000 = 1 kilobyte.
However, these people are still morons.
Read this footnote (specs for a Sony VAIO):
2 GB means one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary.
Sony was named in the lawsuit. IBM and others offer similar footnotes. Looks like someone will be pointing out this fact, duh.
The Whizzard
09-21-2003, 11:20 PM
Back in 1998, when the IEC standard came into being, 2GB were about the maximum. (2GB / 1024 = 1.953GB) About 47MB lost. Now, we have drive in the 100's of GB. (200GB / 1024 = 195.3GB) About 4.7GB lost. I guess the ISO people didn't think drives were going to get as big as they are today. As drives get bigger, the more space is lost. A 2TB drive will yeild a 47GB loss. I don't know about you but I can use 47GB or even 4.7GB but 47MB is childs play. Whoever came up with the ISO standard must have been brain dead or something.
chatins
09-21-2003, 11:22 PM
You mean my 1.44 MB floppy drive does not hold 1.44 MB of data?
a) Back in 1988, I found this out but I wanted to hold out for more damages.
b) I didn't know anything about this because I just woke up from a 20 year sleep.
c) In civil cases, this limit says you cannot file suit more than 3 years after the discovery of the infringement or after it "reasonably" should have been discovered.
chatins
09-21-2003, 11:27 PM
correct answer
c) (I was hoping this would be the start of a new page so you would need to turn the page to find the correct answer El_Cu_Guy)
DarkJedi9
09-22-2003, 12:20 AM
I always figured the reason the drives are advertised as 20 instead of 18.6 is purely because they round up. (I know the literal difference with how one Gig is technically 1024 Megs and all that jazz, I just mean the reason the ad people us the higher number). Also, back when this was first adopted, you have to remember drives were a lot smaller, so when they said 500 Megabytes, it actually was like a 480 or 490 something Meg drive (those numbers are pure guesses). It was accepted because the difference was so small and nobody every dreamed of having drivers 100,000 times larger. Correct away...
...and now I see The Whizzard has more or less already said that. Doh...
deanrantala
09-22-2003, 12:31 AM
sorry to get off subject... but
El_Cu_Guy: is that a Basis turntable in your avatar?:confused:
Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
09-22-2003, 12:50 AM
Originally posted by deanrantala
sorry to get off subject... but
El_Cu_Guy: is that a Basis turntable in your avatar?:confused:
I'm going to guess it's a hard drive with the top cover removed...
hardcore
09-22-2003, 01:07 AM
As El_Cu_Guy said this is just a clashing of standards. Hard Drive manufactures are under the ISO standard, which uses SI units (metric-esque). For example, in binary the closest number to 1000 is 1024, 1*2^10, so for computers and OS's, this is a Kilobyte.
The people that wrote OS's used powers of 2, because modern computers use binary, and used 1*2^10 as the Kilobyte, meanwhile the Hard Drive manufacturers were stuck with ISO certification, where they had the definition of the Kilobyte as 1000 of something. Early on, this was not a major problem, but as hard drives began getting larger and broke the Gigabyte storage capacity, the difference between the two became ever increasingly bigger (1000^3, vs 1024^3).
For example a modern 100GB Hard Drive would actually hold 93.13GB, a loss of 6.87 GB. Which is quite a bit of storage space, that is why only now the storage "loss" problem has become an issue. The masses only notice really big differences apparently...
ozdream
09-22-2003, 02:26 AM
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
In other words these idiots don't understand that the Pc manufacturers are listing the total capacity of the hard drive. Not what's left after installing the OS and apps.
That's "before" formatting capacity, after formatting even if it is "empty" the formatting takes up space.
smitty1276
09-22-2003, 02:49 AM
I think you guys are forgetting what it's like to be a normal, non-computer junkie type... To anyone who isn't immersed in computers all day every day "kilo" and "mega" and "giga" have fairly specific meanings.
The confusion, I would imagine, began before the days of the GB hard drive, when KB was the most used denomination for measuring file sizes. Most third-graders can probably tell you that "kilo" means 1000. Binary is the last thing on most peoples minds, so kilobyte was known to be 1000 bytes. The extra 24 bytes didn't matter back then, and it simply wasn't worth looking like an *** to point out that "its actually one thousand and TWENTY-FOUR bytes, moron."
Nowadays, the ignorance has been driven into peoples heads... "we" used to let them think KB was 1000 because it didn't matter, and now its too late... hard drive manufacturers are marketing in terms that they can understand.
Unfortunately, the OS they are using counts in binary, being a computer an all, and they realize that they've been wrong all of their lives, and now they're ticked off and suing...
Satanic Atheist
09-22-2003, 08:21 AM
Aren't unformatted Floppies marked with a capacity 0f 1.6Mb (or something like that) and it points out that the post-formatting state is only 1.44Mb?
Is it possibly the same situation here?
What I'm trying to get at (and we'll assume a FAT-type filesystem here for simplicity) is that the drive needs to know what exactly is in each track/sector location on the disk. On the smaller drives, you'd have a smaller FAT (since there are fewer tracks & sectors) and the difference between stated capacity and actual capacity is very small. On larger drives, the FAT is bigger since there are more sectors and tracks. Whether the FAT is taken into account when the drive's capacity is listed (after formatting), I do not know.
If anyone can provide some geometry information on a hard drive, it wouldn't be too difficult to work out what the EXACT capacity is, taking into account the FATs and the Sector 0 information (partition table). Does anyone know how to get the size of the Allocation Tables?
Whether this is strictly correct is a matter for debate, but it may go some way to providing an insight into the difference in capacities and may even be a key point in defending the case in question. If the overall diffence is a few K, I think the case will laughed out of court.
James
El_Cu_Guy
09-22-2003, 11:54 AM
El_Cu_Guy: is that a Basis turntable in your avatar?
It's a hard drive, I've been using this for a while now. So just in case you're wondering I didn't change it for this post. It doesn't look that great small. It's looks better at Mozillazine where they let you use 150X150. I'm switching it out for now but maybe I'll put it back sometime later.
smitty1276--
Actually, kilo, mega, and giga have always been metric. If you check out the link explaining bits and bytes I provided it starts out with the line:
Abbreviations like Kb, KB, Mb and GB are often confused, misunderstood or used incorrectly.
However, some people thought "well in computers a kilobyte is 1024", but when the system was developed (the ISO standard) it meant 1000. That's one of the reason the IEC standard was created. 1024 is a kibibyte.
Aren't unformatted Floppies marked with a capacity 0f 1.6Mb (or something like that) and it points out that the post-formatting state is only 1.44Mb?
Actually it's 2MB.
JesseJames
09-22-2003, 04:10 PM
Originally posted by hardcore
As El_Cu_Guy said this is just a clashing of standards. Hard Drive manufactures are under the ISO standard, which uses SI units (metric-esque). For example, in binary the closest number to 1000 is 1024, 1*2^10, so for computers and OS's, this is a Kilobyte.
The people that wrote OS's used powers of 2, because modern computers use binary, and used 1*2^10 as the Kilobyte, meanwhile the Hard Drive manufacturers were stuck with ISO certification, where they had the definition of the Kilobyte as 1000 of something.
Couldnt they show both sizes in this case. They often do this with prices in England by showing the price before and after VAT. I'm sick of magazines saying things like High spec computers for £500 but what they forget to say is that is the price before VAT which bumps the price right up. In this way they arent actually lying, they are just withholding certain bits of information.
deanrantala
09-22-2003, 07:16 PM
Originally posted by Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
I'm going to guess it's a hard drive with the top cover removed...
Hmm... Never thought of that. The neon colors and all threw me off. Does look just like a basis with neon, though:D
DarkJedi9
09-22-2003, 07:38 PM
Originally posted by deanrantala
Hmm... Never thought of that. The neon colors and all threw me off. Does look just like a basis with neon, though:D
I can only assume the color scheme was made by doing a color inversion on the original, if you're curious.
Stween
09-22-2003, 08:00 PM
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
In other words these idiots don't understand that the Pc manufacturers are listing the total capacity of the hard drive. Not what's left after installing the OS and apps.
3. How are the drive sizes determined? There is no "real" industry standard. Some use 1000, while others use the more accurate 1024. How does the OS calculate this? Most drives include notices that there may be variations depending on the OS.
While I haven't had time to read the whole thread thoroughly, I didn't see anybody point this out:
As far as I know, the SI Standard notation for these things are Kilo (K), Mega (M), Giga (G) etc are all base 10, to fall in line with the same notation in different areas of measurement.
The 'classical' measurements of Kilo, Mega, Giga etc of base 2 that most people in computing still use are technically Kibi (Ki), Mibi (Mi) and something else for Giga (Gi). I think.
Hard drive manufacturers are technically correct to report their drive sizes in KB, MB, GB, because they are different from the KiB, MiB and GiB that we tend to expect in most other parts of the industry.
Personally, I still refer to MB and the rest as base 2, because that's what I grew up with. All of the above may be rubbish, I remember reading many rants about the change though. And the slashdot crowd were jumping in their cages like crazed monkeys.
El_Cu_Guy
09-22-2003, 09:35 PM
Lawsuit
According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
A majority of the thread was devoted to this barring discussion of my avatar. In fact there was a discussion about this at experts-exchange.com on May 4, 2003. Maybe they should have read it and could have avoided looking like morons.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the purportedly unfair marketing practices,
Unfair how? The group's ignorance has already been established. See below
an order requiring the defendants to disclose their practices to the public,
They already due in footnote or through links like "Learn More" at Dell.com, duh
restitution
For ignorance and obvious inability/unwillingness to read?
disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees.
In other words cough up (disgorge actually means to vomit or make resitution(legal)) . Why? See above. Pay your attorneys fees? Sure if you can prove quilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Your case has been blasted all over the web. Slashdot zombies are going nuts disproving your case and making you look stupid.
One more note:
In some cases it may be argued that the individual waited too long to file the lawsuit for infringement, thus violating the statute of limitations. In civil cases, this limit says you cannot file suit more than 3 years after the discovery of the infringement or after it "reasonably" should have been discovered. In criminal cases, the limit of the action is set at 5 years after the infringement occurred. In other words, those filing the suit cannot "sit on their rights" and allow damages to accumulate. They must act promptly (within a "reasonable" amount of time) to prevent further damage. Courts, however, do not always agree on the types of acts that start the calendar running for the statute of limitations period.
That last sentence could be the only thing that keeps your case from being thrown out rather than dismissed later.
MorphiusFaydal
09-22-2003, 10:06 PM
my 80 GB (or so threy say) westerd digital HDD shows up as 74.5GB in everything.. 6.5GB loss there..
and every 1.44MB floppy i have, shows itself as being 1.38MB, no matter what os and what filesystem i format it with..
*sigh*
i thought the the 6.5GB was winblows taking away the 'system' spave, like swap and recycle bin space...
but then i found out i was wrong...
the shoulb be suing ibm, maxtor, seagate, wester digital, and other actual manufacturors od drives.. not the ressellers..
yeah...
chris
El_Cu_Guy
09-23-2003, 02:44 AM
my 80 GB (or so threy say) westerd digital HDD shows up as 74.5GB in everything.. 6.5GB loss there..
I've been reading these and it makes no sense. Waste/Loss, if you fill the drive to capacity that's it. It's not like there's a hidden gig or 2 waiting to be discovered.
It's all in how the drive capacity is calculated. There's no "actual" wasted space.
You guys crack me up.
mrBen
09-23-2003, 04:09 AM
For all us Linux users, use the -H flag of the df command (yes, thats -H rather than -h) to view the results in Mb/Gb where it uses powers of 1000 not 1024.
It's one of the tricky things - it's been a standard for hdd manufacturers for ages. It's only because drives are so big now that people notice.
leonpmu
09-23-2003, 04:21 AM
Of reading every thread, including the whole thing about Avatars ;D
But what everyone (so far) has failed to also see is that on EVERY hard disk, and I am currently looking at a Maxtor on my desk is that they explain hw they have the capacity figured out
MAXTOR D540X-40 5400RPM
40 GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
1 GB=1,000,000,000 Bytes
So that explains it, I have an IBM drive (old) that says that it uses the 1024 standard - it all depends on the manufacturer.
Also the fact that it is claimed as false advertising is baseless, as they have explained on the item itself, how it is conceived, therefore it is not false advertising. If they did NOT explain it, then it would be, so some monkey has wasted money on some frivolous lawsuit with a 2bit (hehehe) lawyer who doesnt know anything about these things.
Just MO
L
Parcival
09-23-2003, 04:57 AM
In my eye, the whole problem finally arrived because some point-n-click pampered users finally open their eyes and ponder what's in their system. I know the difference between 1000 and 1024 ever since I have been messing with loading things into RAM in DOS.
I believe for the average homeuser the discussion is also pretty pointless because the "lost space" doesn't really matter. I upgraded from a 3GB HD to a 13 GB to a 40 GB - everytime I had a HD filled and could have gotten possibly crazy about the "lost space" there already were new HDs for cheap prizes that had three times the storage capacity of the old one. It's surely more exspensive to pay a lawyer than to just buy a new HD for 120 bucks. ;)
ekent82
09-23-2003, 05:20 AM
I just want to point out that there have been previous cases in the industry that are very much along these lines and were successful. The most notible one that i can remember delt with the amount of inches that companies used to advertise their monitors. They would call a monitor a "17 inch" monitor even though it only had 15.5" of screen space. In other words, they were including the plastic border that surrounded the tube. As a result they were forced in the terms of the lawsuit to acknowledge the actual measurement of the screen space in any ad and you'll note this visable today (I assume in addition to some monitary restitution).
The terms of the case sound rediculous but most times lawyers ask for much more than they expect to get, planning on bargining down to some more "reasonable" level (reasonable in the eyes of the arbitrator).
Edit: btw first post =D
leonpmu
09-23-2003, 05:46 AM
Originally posted by ekent82
They would call a monitor a "17 inch" monitor even though it only had 15.5" of screen space. In other words, they were including the plastic border that surrounded the tube.
Actually, they (just like television sets, measure the screen from bottom left to the top right hand corner of the screen.
If some buffoon, doesn't know that he shouldn't be buying a computer or a telly.
freakmn
09-23-2003, 06:26 AM
I believe the OP is referring to the fact that some companies advertised the entire size of the screen, even though some of it is obviously covered by the plastic shell (if it came loose, or moved a fraction of an inch, you shouldn't be able to stick your fingers in it...)
JesseJames
09-23-2003, 07:08 PM
Originally posted by leonpmu
Actually, they (just like television sets, measure the screen from bottom left to the top right hand corner of the screen.
If some buffoon, doesn't know that he shouldn't be buying a computer or a telly.
But they wouldn't know that they dont know this so they wouldn't know they shouldnt be buying a computer :D
I'm happy, plenty of space, but where did my 1gig, or is that 3gig go?:D
Stween
09-24-2003, 05:48 AM
Further to my last post, something a little more comprehensive:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
Officially hard drive manufacturers are using the correct terminology, in line with the rest of the world. It's us that uses the wrong terminology.
I'd use the correct terminology if "mebibyte" didn't sound so ludicrous.
El_Cu_Guy
10-15-2003, 02:59 PM
About the same time I started this thread I sent an email to PC World who were also covering the story on their web site.
I got this yesterday (10/14):
Dear Mr. Lindsay:
Thanks for writing to us a while back on that suit. It looks like we will be using your letter in an upcoming issue. Do you want to send your city and state address?
Thanks again for your interest in PC World.
Sincerely,
Stephen Compton
Letters Editor
PC World
viperlin
10-15-2003, 03:26 PM
erm i don't think it's meant like that.
i have a plain storage harddrive, no OS, on the label it says 40GB, it is actually 37GB in size with nothing but a filesystem, and i don't think a filesystem takes up 3GB even if it is journalised (maybe 33MB)
this does annoy me greatly, i bought a 128MB USB Pen drive and i can only get 115MB out of it and fat32 does not take up 13MB of space.
i support them to label harddrives with their real capacity instead of rounding it up to a whole number.
NHaughton
10-15-2003, 03:39 PM
My car has an advertised 1.6 litre engine, which is actually only 1598cc according to the owner's handbook. My motorcycle has an advertised 750cc engine, but it's only 748cc according to the handbook. My AMD processor is a 1700XP but 'only' runs at 1100MHz.
Can I sue? :)
Some people shouldn't be allowed out without adult supervision.
NHaughton
10-15-2003, 03:48 PM
Originally posted by Satanic Atheist
If anyone can provide some geometry information on a hard drive, it wouldn't be too difficult to work out what the EXACT capacity is, taking into account the FATs and the Sector 0 information (partition table). Does anyone know how to get the size of the Allocation Tables?
The problem with quoting a formatted capacity is that different filesystems will surely consume differing capacities for the formatting infomation? FAT, VFAT, and all the *nix filesystems all consume different amounts of disk real estate to format the drive and build an empty filesystem. Manufacturers would put themselves in a situation of always being wrong, whatever they stated. Perhaps the solution is public education about what disk capacity actually means.
Actually I believe that a statement on the box such as 'approximate capacity' would surely solve the problem.
ricstr
10-15-2003, 04:32 PM
Originally posted by NHaughton
My car has an advertised 1.6 litre engine, which is actually only 1598cc according to the owner's handbook. My motorcycle has an advertised 750cc engine, but it's only 748cc according to the handbook. My AMD processor is a 1700XP but 'only' runs at 1100MHz.
Can I sue? :)
Some people shouldn't be allowed out without adult supervision.
Bit off topic but your XP1700 should be at 1466MHz, the reason it clocks at 1100MHz is because your fsb is 100MHz and not 133MHz which it is supposed to be.
Back on topic, would I be correct if I thought that SCSI disks were sold with the capacity messured as 1024*1024*1024 and it only appears to be IDE or other consumer grade disks that are messured as 1000*1000*1000 ?
Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
10-15-2003, 11:01 PM
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
I've been reading these and it makes no sense. Waste/Loss, if you fill the drive to capacity that's it. It's not like there's a hidden gig or 2 waiting to be discovered.
It's all in how the drive capacity is calculated. There's no "actual" wasted space.
You guys crack me up.
Actually, speaking of "hidden" disk space, back in the earlier days of the Mac, there actually was hidden disk space. Apple didn't partition out the entirety of the disk when they shipped the computer-- anywhere from 2 to 5 MB of unused disk space. Supposedly, this was done in case there were bad sectors on the drives when they shipped.
Now, 2 to 5 MB might not seem like much now, but we're talking hard drives in the ranges of 20 to 160MB. That's a stinking lot of extra space on a drive like that. Every older Mac I've ever owned has had at least an extra 2MB unallocated, that you can access if you repartition your system.
El_Cu_Guy
12-01-2003, 05:03 AM
UPDATE!!!
PC World
December 2003
Page 49
bottom of the page, inside the big blue box
Seph64
12-01-2003, 05:19 AM
Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy
UPDATE!!!
PC World
December 2003
Page 49
bottom of the page, inside the big blue box
Could you post this update for those of us who don't buy PC World Magizine?
El_Cu_Guy
12-01-2003, 03:20 PM
I can't find the letters section online. So if you're asking if I will type out the enitre letter for ya...I'll think about it.
Letter of the Month: Understanding Hard-Drive Sizes
I've been reading about a group that's suing PC makers for deceptive advertising of hard-drive sizes ["PC Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Storage," from MacCentral.com, the news site of PC World's sibling publication Macworld]. This case has no merit.
Hard-drive manufacturers usually determine the size of the drive based on the old metric standard, where kilo = 1000. So the notations are powers of ten (kilo, mega, giga). But this group seems to believe that kilo = 1024 (or 210) and that PC makers are using deceptive notations to promote drive sizes. Not so. A kilobyte (KB) normally means 1000, but a kibibyte (KiB) = 1024, according to the International Electrotechnical Commission standard. Manufacturers are using the correct notation, as they are calculating the hard-drive size (unformatted) using the old standard (metric).
When a PC or operating system calculates a drive's capacity, the result will be a multiple of 1024 (1 kibibyte), but it uses metric notation such as gigabyte rather than gibibyte. So while capacity measurements may state x billion bytes (GB), actual formatted capacity will be less.
Aaron Lindsay, via the Internet
justlinux.com
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