News Article: Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Size Claims

[kopfjaeger]

Thu September 18, 2003 05:00 PM ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
- A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives.

...

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.

The result is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity, the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs said this difference in convention is deceptive and leaves buyers with less storage than they thought they were getting when they purchased their computers.

[Read the rest at:]
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3470394

[sixf00t4]

ha, i think we all knew this, but never really thought anyone would sue over it...

frankly, i think it is false advertising, i would like to see actual figures.

[Starfury_2260]

Sheesh come on whats 1 or 2 gigabytes anymore people???

[XxCowOfChaosxX]

when you have 400megs left on your harddrive, 4 gigs could mean alot

[kopfjaeger]

I would like to think that the point IS about false advertising. If it takes just as much ink to tell the truth as it does to lie, why not be accurate -- and tell the truth? Why marketers play these games, telling us gas is $1.68 and 9/10 of a cent per gallon when there is no such tenth of a cent piece to give any change; to tell us something is $99.99, rather than $100? Even these are not the best examples because they deal with de minimus cost differences, but why do we allow them to lie? Lies in advertising should never be allowed, after all, marketers justify advertising as the means to 'educate' the public. Perhaps I am getting worked up over nothing, but I see no jusitfication for allowing vendors to blatantly lie about their products. It should be "Liar Beware" - not "Buyer Beware."

[TranceHead]

there is a good reason why 20GB HDs only have 18.6GB actual space
the manufacturers use a metric system to calculate capacity
whereas windows will use a binary system
by 20GB they mean to say your hard drive will hold 20,000,000,000 Bytes using 1000 Bytes to a KB, 1000KB to a MB and 1000MB to a GB
a pc will read 1024 Bytes to a KB, 1024KB to a MB and 1024MB to a GB
this means a true 20GB hard drive should have 21,474,836,480 Bytes
divide 20,000,000,000 by 1024, divide your answer by 1024 again and then divide that answer by 1024 once more and see what answer you get

[Starfury_2260]

sheesh 1.4 gigabytes. it's just sooo easy for people to sue over the silliest things. it seems as though some people have taken it up as a way to make money.

[xcalabers]

1.4GB is nothing....? Tell you what. You give me your fax number and I'll openm 1.4 GB of MP3s in notepad and fax them to you.

[Starfury_2260]

when theres 250gb+ hard drives it is.

[[Neo770]]

Yea but think about how much of that 250Gb you have useable, your loosing alot more then 1.4Gb's