Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Capacity Claims (1 Viewer)

[Christian Behrens]

I agree that it is false advertising. When you look at the info any OS gives you, it is in actual GB (or MB).

Or take blank CDs. You buy 700MB blanks, and guess what, you can burn that much data on them. Now you switch to DVDs for backups and all of a sudden you cannot write the 4.7GB data on them. Why? Because they actually only hold 4.37GB.

We had exactly this issue at work that it wasn't clear why our burns would fail. After reducing the amount of data to backup it was fine.

This is not about the consumer getting anything but accurate information, and I support that, too.

-Christian

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Again, I ask how are customers being deceived when most of them do not know what a gigabyte is?

This is a really valid point. A lot of people don't understand most of the terminology, so it's not like they are being hurt by it.

If you want to get ridiculous about it, you could sue over a bunch of different specifications used by computer manufacturers. MHZ aren't always accurate, 52x CD-ROM, I don't think so, what do baud rates really mean when compared to everything else, has anyone seen true 11mbps connections with 802.11b? ATA-100 and ATA-133 are somewhat fraudulent because only certain portions of the drive act at that speed, but the rest of the system can't cope with it. Have you ever counted the DPI of your printer?

 

[John_Berger]

Why? Because they actually only hold 4.37GB.

Exactly, because they're playig the same game of deception - and it is deception - by making it seem like the storage capacity is higher than it is.

Let's take a look, translating their version of gigabyte into the correct version of gigabyte...

4,700,000,000 / 1024^3 =
4,700,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 =

Well, slap my thighs and call me Charlie!

4.377216 GB!

Imagine that!

 

[John_Berger]

A lot of people don't understand most of the terminology, so it's not like they are being hurt by it.

Ah, yes. The ol' "if they don't know, they're not being hurt." I totally forgot that consumer ignorance totally removes the burden of companies from providing truthful advertising. How silly of me. :rolleyes

 

[Keith Mickunas]

"We're saying that it has more than what it really has because we're hoping that the populous is too stupid to notice the difference."

That's exactly what the monitor people did. It is exactly the same thing.

 

[John_Berger]

That's exactly what the monitor people did. It is exactly the same thing.

Have you even been reading this tread or are you just picking out those statements that can cause an argument? ("Oh, you want the room next door. This is abuse." )

The tube was a physical dimension of 17". Although there might have been some measure of deception, the tube still came to an actual, physical dimension of 17". The company was completely accurate in saying that there was a 17" dimension. Even if the viewer could not see or utilize all of it, there was a tube in that TV with a dimension of 17" diagonal. (I'm not sating that they were justified in equating viewable area with physical area, but the fact is that the tube was indeed 17" diagonal.)

But a 20 GB drive does NOT have 20 GB, it has 18.6 GB. That's the difference. This is NOT an issue of "it has it, but you can't use all of it." This is an issue of "We're saying that is has more than is physically there." You CANNOT get 20 GB of data on a supposed 20 GB hard drive, irrespective of the file system overhead. It is physically impossible. THAT is false advertising.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Will you people PLEASE stop trying to apply the rules of the decimal system to a binary/hexadecimal system! They are not the same!!

Where does hexadecimal enter into it?
The definition of a kilo as 2^10 was done as a convenience, lets use all 10 bits since we're going to need at least 10 bits to count to 1000. So we (I say we, because I am a computer scientist) use kilo and mega and giga as powers of 2 because it's convenient when addressing memory, that is all. Hell, only the OS guys really care about that. But the fact is, I'm a human being, when I count things normally I start with my 10 fingers and go from there. Hell, Windows round up all the time anyways. If a file only has a few characters in it, guess what, it takes any from 512 bytes to 2k to store it. Big deal if the hard drive holds 40,000,000 bytes or 40*2^30 bytes, sure the error adds up over time, but it's just not a big deal. And it's defnitely not worth a lawsuit and a bunch of stupid disclaimers in advertising from now on.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

You CANNOT get 20 GB of data on a supposed 20 GB hard drive, irrespective of the file system overhead.

You can too put 20 billion bytes of data on that hard drive. And the adds say a GB is 1 billion bytes. 'nuff said.

 

[John_Berger]

The definition of a kilo as 2^10 was done as a convenience, lets use all 10 bits since we're going to need at least 10 bits to count to 1000.

HELLO! Computers use BINARY! They do NOT use 10 bits at a time and never have! They can use 0,1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,etc, but 10 (since it is not a power of 2) CANNOT be used for computational bit rates and therefore cannot be used in storage calculations.

Convenience or not, it is WRONG. Computers do NOT think in decimal notation, never have, and probably never will, so it's completely ludicrous to notate anything related to computers in a decimal system -- except for clearly obvious decimal notation like "how many CD-Rs do you want to buy".

 

[John_Berger]

And the adds say a GB is 1 billion bytes. 'nuff said.

Oh, puh-lease. DO spare us all of the "'nuff said" crap. If you think that "'nuff said" is going to suddenly make us think that your statement is end-all-be-all and that you're in the right, you're sorely mistaken.

If I say that I'm selling a blue sportscar but convenienty put in a footnote that "blue = purple", then I expect people to not be shocked when they see a purple car instead of a blue one, even if they don't know what "blue" means in relation to that advertisement. Why? Because I put a footnote in my advertisement saying exactly what "blue" means. Because of that, no one has any reason to complain that the color is not what they expected, right?

'Nuff said indeed!

:rolleyes

 

[Neal_C]

So lets see...the lawsuit was just filed so we should look for a court date sometime in the summer of 2004? Hopefully by early 2005 there will be a ruling. With any luck the computer companies will be found innocent, and save the taxpayers some money. But lets just say they don't win, they will certainly appeal. The appellate courts date should be set sometime in the end of 2005. Maybe by early 2006 they can rule.

Lets just say these "plaintiffs" win. I frankly am hoping the companies will have to reimburse money back for unuseable space.

And lets see...at current time, about $1 buys you 1gig of hard drive space. In 2006, i'm sure we should atleast be down to 25 cents per gig.

So plaintiffs, congratulations, here is your nice shiney quarter for that missing gig of space on your 20 gig drive.

 

[John_Berger]

So plaintiffs, congratulations, here is your nice shiney quarter for that missing gig of space on your 20 gig drive.

Oh, for crying out loud! :rolleyes

Since when is something "just not illegal enough" that it does not deserve to be in the courts? I never realized that there was a relativism to law. Go to the various RIAA related threads and you'll see a very different attitude.

Neal, please read the thread next time, particularly that section that says that this is NOT about finances or lost money due to decreased capacity but instead that it is about FALSE ADVERTISING by claiming that a device can store more data than it actually can. Just because the cost per GB is relatively small does NOT mean that the hard drive manufacturers should be allowed to continue with their deception.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

So please tell me why 1024 equals 2^10? Why is that important? By your logic should 2^8 or 2^16 be used as the measuring point? But they chose 2^10 because it's close to 1000 so they could relate it to something people are familiar with. And where did the 640k limit of DOS come from? Why such an odd number?

Computers are a tool we use. They should relate to the numbering system we use. When you print a document would you like it if the program told you page 101 of 1011 was printing? Or would you rather have it be 5 of 11?

Computers think entirely in binary, yes that's true. But they display in hexadecimal or decimal, as appropriate based on the data and the user. It's up to the programmer to decide how to display that information to the user. Frankly, I don't understand why they decided to show file sizes in 2^10 increments. Those aren't useful to anybody really.

 

[Neal_C]

This is a perfect example of when something is "not illegal enough" to be in the courts. Idiots file these frivolous lawsuits all the time and we all, as taxpayers, have to pay for it. This is a perfect example of what is wrong with our court system.

And this isn't about finances? Do you really think these idiots are filing a "class action lawsuit" just to get computer companies to change their advertising? Yea right...

 

[Keith Mickunas]

You have to show how it's misleading. Do you buy your data by the gigabyte? Are you easily impressed by a game that claims to require 1GB of HD space instead of 0.9GB of HD space? Are you going to break your 20GB drive into 10 separate pieces and sell it that way? Do those numbers really matter that much?

Considering the lawsuit is against the computer manufacturers and not the hard drive manufacturers, it'll be interesting to see how this goes. My guess is that if they lose, or settle, you'll start seeing the exact same text as HD ads, 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Why else are they not suing the HD manufacturers? And the end result will be the lawyers making money, a computer companies will make a tiny bit less profit, and if you send in your info you might get a few pennies for your trouble.

 

[MarkHastings]

Giga is a billion, that is that. The advertising often lists it that way, the definition of giga is a billion, what more do you need to know?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I see where the confusion is.

People see 20GB and assume that it means 20 billion bytes. Is this actually correct? Doesn't a GigaByte actually mean 1 thousand MegaBytes?

Example:
1 MegaByte = 1024 bytes
1,000 MegaBytes = 1 GigaByte

so

1 GigaByte = 1,000 groups of 1024 bytes (i.e. 1,024,000 bytes)

so 1 GigaByte, even though it sounds like it means 1 billion bytes, is actually the wrong way to look at it. 1 GigaByte is actually only 1,000 MegaBytes which relates to 1,024,000 bytes.


The fact that people are assuming that 1 giga byte means 1 billion bytes is where the problems rise.


p.s. Sorry if my math isn't exactly correct (I believe it's right), but hopefully you see what I'm getting at in ignoring the fact that gigabytes relate directly to megabytes and not directly to single bytes

 

[John_Berger]

You're falling into the decimal/hexadecimal trap again. 2^10 is STILL binary-compatible. No matter how much you're going to spin this to try to fit your argument (which you won't be able to do, by the way), the number of 2^10 is a BINARY-COMPATIBLE number, which 20,000,000,000 is NOT because it is not obtainable by 2 to the power of anything.

But they display in hexadecimal or decimal, as appropriate based on the data and the user.

Display and computation are totally non-related. Each letter that we type is a graphical representation of a binary number that the computer uses.

When it comes to storage of this nature, a GB is not and cannot be converted to a different number just becuase it's easier. The whole reason why we use "GB" is to make the number easier for us to comprehend. (Would you understand a hard drive that's advertised as "21,474,836,480 byte capacity"? I'd even have to take come time to figure that out. ) But to change the meaning of the term "gigabyte" to a decimal notation for the sake of simplicity when that notation is not accurate is deceptive advertising, and that's what this lawsuit is about.

 

[John_Berger]

gigabytes relate directly to megabytes and not directly to single bytes

Well, kind of, sort of, maybe. I mean, they're all related somehow. It's the improper use of the terms of magnitude that's causing the problem.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Early comptuer scientists developed the following system:
kilobytes = 2^10 or 1024 bytes
megabytes = 2^20 or 1024*1024 bytes
gigabytes = 2^30 or 1024*1024*1024 bytes
They did this for convenience because they wanted to refer to memory sizes in a way that was somewhat related to the way they would be addressing them. But they bastardized the terms giga, mega and kilo. They changed them from being powers of 10 to powers of 2. But notice how they still used 2 raised to a multiple of 10? That's because we think in decimal so using these kinds of numbers is easier.

But this isn't relevant on hard drives. It varies with the filesystem and the size of the hard drive. To be accurate you should like at the size of the drive, subtract the overhead for the filesystem and then divide by the minimum file size to tell you how many files or what average size you could store. Right now I'm running a Win2k system with a "20GB" drive with NTFS on it. I'm looking at a file that has 378 bytes, which by the way isn't a power of two, but explorer tells me it's 1kb and the properties tell me it takes 4k on the disk. So what's the big fucking deal if my hard drive isn't exactly 20 * 2^30 bytes?

This is like going to home depot and buying some bags of sand then suing them because they aren't accurate measured down to the exact same number of grains of sand.

 

[John_Berger]

You have to show how it's misleading.

No matter how many times you try this, it won't work either.

1 GB is NOT 1,000,000,000 bytes.

1 GB is NOT 2,000,000,000 bytes.

1 GB is NOT 1,073,741,825 bytes.

1 GB is and always will equal 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Just because they put a footnote saying that 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 does NOT justify their intentional distortion of the proper term of a gigabyte! They are intentionally modifying the definition of a decades-old term to suit their purpose to make it seem like the hard drives hold more data than they actually do by preying on the ignorance of the public.

How can you POSSIBLY think that this is even remotely ethical?!

Fine! Purple is now blue because I said so here on HTF! I'm intentionally changing the definition of blue to suit my needs. Where's my car?