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Originally Posted by orlok
This is the first I've ever heard of them, and I work in IT...
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I'm convinced this stuff was pushed by the hard drive manufacturers.
"Kilo" is 1000, and "Mega" is 1.000.000, in "normal life." In the "IT life", it has been, and ever will be, 1024 and 1.048.576.
However, the hard disk manufactuers have been using thousand and million for the longest time. So, a 500 megabyte (MB) hard disk (which was normal during the mid-90's) was 500 x 1000 x 1000 bytes, instead of 500 x 1024 x 1024. When such a hard drive is put into a computer with an operating system that uses counts by 1024 instead of 1000, the hard disk will show up as 476.8 MB.
I'm 100% convinced that the HDD manufacturers pushed the stupid KiB, MiB, TiB (Kibi, Mebi, Gebi, Tebi) with SI, so they could keep selling their disks in MB and GB (and now, TB).
Because... a 256 GB SSD, containing 256 billion bytes exactly is now completely correct. The 'official' amount of space for a computer is now 238 GiB.
And it holds true: The SSD in this laptop is sold as 256 GB, or 256.000.000.000 bytes. Divide this by (1024 x 1024 x 1024), and the outcome will be 238,4 GB before formatting... and sure enough, Windows reports the drive space as 237 GB available after formatting.
'Officially', Windows is wrong, and it 'should' be displayed as 237 GiB. Linux does this (and I don't know if it can be changed somewhere).
Microsoft has to say something about this..
Quote:
Although the International Electronic Commission established the term kibibyte for 1024 bytes, with the abbreviation KiB, Windows Explorer continues to use the abbreviation KB. Why doesn't Explorer get with the program?
Because nobody else is on the program either.
If you look around you, you'll find that nobody (to within experimental error) uses the terms kibibyte and KiB. When you buy computer memory, the amount is specified in megabytes and gigabytes, not mebibytes and gibibytes. The storage capacity printed on your blank CD is indicated in megabytes. Every document on the Internet (to within experimental error) which talks about memory and storage uses the terms kilobyte/KB, megabyte/MB, gigabyte/GB, etc. You have to go out of your way to find people who use the terms kibibyte/KiB, mebibyte/MiB, gibibyte/GiB, etc.
In other words, the entire computing industry has ignored the guidance of the IEC.
Explorer is just following existing practice. Everybody (to within experimental error) refers to 1024 bytes as a kilobyte, not a kibibyte. If Explorer were to switch to the term kibibyte, it would merely be showing users information in a form they cannot understand, and for what purpose? So you can feel superior because you know what that term means and other people don't.
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I'm not someone who advocates to be a stick in the mud (even though I detest changes for the sake of changing), and I've got enough stuff to rail about with regard to Windows and Microsoft, but in this case, I think they're right. The entire industry, except for Linux (the distro's I've used, that is) has ignored the 'new' terms.
Except for the HDD/SSD manufacturers and (some) die-hard Linux d00des, *everybody* means "1024" when they talk about a Kilobyte, so I think it's stupid of Wikipedia to confuse its readers by adopting the 'new' terms.