and somebody tell me why the heck normal recordable CDR are labeled 700MB which is actually rounded down 703MiB and 737 decimal MB! That's great. HDD, DVD and floppy manufacturers chose to use multiplies of 1000 to label their products, but CDs are an exemption from it and their MB are normal everyday used megabytes with 1024*1024*1024 bytes!
And this also applies to RAM as far as I recall. When you see a stick of 1 GB of RAM, it's 1024 MiB (and not 1000 MB like a GB should be according to SI).
I guess we'll never get inside the minds of marketing people. There just doesn't seem to be any consistancy with them. But perhaps that's the whole idea - to get people discussing the products.
If we were to get past thinking only in terms of black and white, other, quite simple and useful options could present themselves. It should be obvious that the disagreement is not about wanting the manufacturers' to use a different math, or for computers to run in 'decimal'.
A simple statement on the box plainly stating that 2TB actually is 1.8TB in real world usage is a simple solution and would add zero to the packaging costs. And the consumer would know that his drive would only show as 1.8TB. But I'm sure this solution hasn't occurred to the marketing geniuses.
If the drives were made in China, would we expect them to translate the printing on the box to English (or that of whatever country they are marketed in)? Of course! It's a matter of simple translation so that the consumer knows what he is getting, and has nothing whatsoever to do with 'the math' or decimal or any other technical process or how it is applied.
It has only to do with informing the customer of what 2TB actually means to them and their OS. Nothing more. Technical reasoning is incidental.
James
The only way you can do that is by sending them back to school.It has only to do with informing the customer of what 2TB actually means to them and their OS
Apart from a good helping of nuisance that is being forwarded in this thread, it is quite entertaining. It reminds me of the discussions about the conspiracy theories on the social networks.
Yes, I suppose you're right...We should send the entire computer illiterate populace to school.The only way you can do that is by sending them back to school.It has only to do with informing the customer of what 2TB actually means to them and their OS
Apart from a good helping of nuisance that is being forwarded in this thread, it is quite entertaining. It reminds me of the discussions about the conspiracy theories on the social networks.. Certainly a much better solution than informative packaging. But, of course, this is all academic to the reality that things will undoubtedly continue as they have. I think the "nuisance" you mention is merely healthy debate. My regrets that you and perhaps others have have interpreted it as such. Happy holidays and prosperity to you and yours.
James
If everyone replaced their Hard Drives with SSD drives would this solve the confusion?
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