3 ms·

I always assumed it was a sales gimmick: more GB fit in storage device than GiB.

• Pet_Ant 3y ago
  That it did. I can assure you that in the 80's when I was first learning about computers no one thought that a kilobyte was 1,000 vs 1,024... that said right now, without looking it up I cannot tell you how much a megabyte is so perhaps it was a bad idea to begin with. Edit: Looks like it's 1,048,576
  • mytailorisrich 3y ago
    > without looking it up I cannot tell you how much a megabyte is You just need to remember that you need to multiple by 1,024 instead of 1,000. So 1 kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, 1 megabyte is 1,024 kilobytes so 1,024x1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes, 1 gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes, etc.
    • Pet_Ant 3y ago
      Yes, but if you can't recall the number by heart it's not really that useful as a number.
    • WithinReason 3y ago
      Depends. You know how floppy discs were advertised to be 1.44 MB? That was calculated as 1000*1024 bytes
      • mytailorisrich 3y ago
        It was double the previous 720 KB ones, so 1,440 KB, which they wrongly advertised as 1.44 MB, indeed. But that's irrelevant to my previous comment.