Seagate pays out over the definition of a gigabyte

[Gary]

Quote "Seagate Technology, the world's largest hard-drive maker, is offering customers a five percent refund on drives bought during the last six years following a lawsuit over the definition of a "gigabyte". As an alternative, customers can choose to receive free backup software" see story here http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39290393,00.htm

[Rik]

It would be good to get the definition decided once and for all. Especially as I have two Seagate drives purchased in the qualifying period.

[Gary]

I have two as well, one died alas

[Ray]

It would be good to get the definition decided once and for all. Especially as I have two Seagate drives purchased in the qualifying period.

I've also got 2 Seagate drives in my main machine purchased about 2 years ago, reading the info about this settlement though it appears that it only relates to drives purchased in the USA?

[Rik]

Almost certainly, Ray, but a judgement would make Seagate's position here untenable if they were challenged. At least I hope it would.

[Gary]

I would imagine as you say Rik if it is upheld in the states, people in other countries should be able to have the same leverage

[Lance]

But we all know the Americans can't count properly anyway! Just look at how they progress from millions to billions to trillions!

[Rik]

Though they seem to count well enough when deciding what to charge us for their products. 

[Lance]

Indeed they do Rik, or is it that they charge the amount they do because they don't understand exchange rates?!

[Rik]

Certainly the latter, Lance. Adobe say that they do this to protect us from currency fluctuations. I'd be quite prepared to take the risk...

[Gary]

Indeed they do Rik, or is it that they charge the amount they do because they don't understand exchange rates?!

Bit like the price for Vista in the states compared with in the UK Lance

[john]

Indeed they do Rik, or is it that they charge the amount they do because they don't understand exchange rates?!

No it's not the American suppliers that don't understand the exchange rate it the majority of the British public who just pay whatever they ask 

I'm a member of a pub quiz team and we recently got the question 'how many Kilobytes are in a Gigabyte ?'

Annoyingly I said 1024 but then thought that although that was the true number most people would say 1000 and so we changed it and got it wrong 

It appears to depend on the context that it's used and Wikipeadia offers this definition :

There are two slightly different definitions of gigabyte in general use:

1,000,000,000 bytes or 109 bytes is the decimal definition used in telecommunications (such as network speeds) and most computer storage manufacturers (such as hard disks and flash drives). This usage is compatible with SI. Quotes from Seagate: "The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal",[1] and, "One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity".[2] Similar quotes are found on the websites of other storage manufacturers.

1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 1024³, or 230 bytes. This is the definition commonly used for computer memory and file sizes. Since 1999, the IEC recommends that this unit should instead be called a gibibyte (abbreviated GiB). Microsoft uses this definition to display hard drive sizes, as do most other operating systems [3]. Every operating system uses this definition when referring to the size of files. By this definition, there are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte.

[Rik]

Too many standards, eh John.