Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Capacity Claims (2 Viewers)

[John_Berger]

And I think you should pursue things that cause REAL harm.

So, the prevention of false advertising doesn't warrant legal action? Marketers will LOVE hearing that.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

P&S hurts the public because they aren't seeing what the director intended, that is an issue. But once one of my 120GB drives gets close to 100GB on it I'm going to buy another, or a 250GB, or whatever. Or I'll just delete some of the crap that must be clogging it up because I don't have 120GB of actual useful data on my system. I'm not going to be missing out on anything because my 120GB drive only holds 110GB.

 

[John_Berger]

I'm not going to be missing out on anything because my 120GB drive only holds 110GB.

Will you please get over this "it doesn't do harm, so leave it alone" belief? Just because you're not missing out doesn't make their deceptions acceptable, nor does it mean that no one else is impacted by their deceptions. I think that several IT managers will be more than happy to disagree with that notion.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

You ask the average consumer what is a gigabyte, they either won't have clue, or they'll use their language knowledge and tell you 1 billion bytes. Ask a computer professional and they'll say approx. 1 billion bytes, unless you're talking about hard drives because they're liars. The people that it matters to know the truth, the people it doesn't matter to don't know, don't care, and won't ever be affected by it.

So John, when you go to Subway and order a foot long sandwich do you take a ruler with you? It'd be a damn shame if you didn't get all 12 inches of that sandwich. If it was found that some of their sandwiches came it at 11.9 inches, would you support a law suit based on that? I'm guessing yes.

If you don't like the way hard drives are advertised, don't buy them. Write to the companies and demand accurate measurements. Organize a boycott. Petition the FTC to look into the matter and pass regulations about what 1GB is. But don't waste the courts time on it. They have real cases to deal with.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

You're really reaching to make your argument matter. You've made a complete joke of yourself by pulling in the OAR argument. That is so completely different it's laughable. The fact is there is a sizable minority that does care about OAR, plus there's the artist feelings that matters too. But you can't show the same thing with hard drives. I can just see some engineer crying to another "Oh, it's horrible, I came up with this cool way to get exactly 18.6GB on this platter, and the marketing people are calling it 20GB! No one will ever know that I worked it out to be 18.6GB!"

 

[John_Berger]

So John, when you go to Subway and order a foot long sandwich do you take a ruler with you? It'd be a damn shame if you didn't get all 12 inches of that sandwich. If it was found that some of their sandwiches came it at 11.9 inches, would you support a law suit based on that? I'm guessing yes.

Oh, please. This is exactly why I won't take you seriously anymore when you come out with completely asinine statements like this. If you're so desperate to look like a cornered puppy who refuses to give up, fine. That's your ego problem, not mine. You're only making yourself look ridiculous with totally stupid statements like this.

If you don't want to look at the big picture and how this affects not only large storage facilities as well as the intentional deceptions of hard drive manufacturers but would rather stay in your little bubble and complain about how "it doesn't affect me", that's your problem and I'm not going to entertain your ridiculous apathy any longer. At least Robert and I were having some fun with it for a while.

 

[MarkHastings]

IT professionals are the only ones that could be harmed by misinformation with regards to data storage, but any professional that knows his stuff shouldn't ever be caught by such a simple misrepresentation. The average consumer, the only one who could be fooled by this, won't be hurt by it because their requirements aren't that strict.

Yes, if you know what you are talking about then there is no reason to be duped, but why is it ok to dupe someone who doesn't know any better (i.e. the average consumer)? Why are you arguing that it is ok for these companies to fool consumers by lying? That's just horrible. By this logic, why not boast a computer with a 28GHz/Pentium 8 processor? I mean, if you know anything about computers you'd know that neither of those things exist, so it's ok if your average consumer buys it because they really don't need (or would use) all of that power to begin with, right?....WRONG!


Keith, let me ask you a question...Let's say you buy a large Pizza and there are a couple pieces missing...Knowing that you will never finish the whole thing, would you complain? I mean why complain about missing pieces if you're not going to eat the whole thing?

And how come no one has commented on my 19GB file theory? As someone who can only afford the bare minimum, I'd be pretty pissed off if I needed to transfer a 19GB file to an external hard drive only to find out that it doesn't fit because my 20GB drive only holds 18.6 GB's.

 

[John_Berger]

And how come no one has commented on my 19GB file theory?

Because it proves that we're right in what we're saying and they don't want to admit to it because they'd be admitting that they were wrong.

This is almost as bad as an RIAA or DD/DTS thread.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

how this affects not only large storage facilities

Once again, if you're an IT professional and you don't properly research the equipment you're buying, you don't belong in the business. If you go to Seagate and you tell them that you are putting together a multi-terrabyte storage center, I'll bet anything you'll get accurate quotes from them. The language of the contract should stipulate what exactly your needs are, and what a GB is. If it doesn't, that's you're own stupid fault. Just like if you need something in metric and get it from an American company without specifying metric, you're going to get screwed.

I can't believe you're saying you can't take me seriously when you brought OAR into this. What a laugh. You've really sunk to a new low.

 

[Neal_C]

I'll comment on your 19gb file theory.

Why in the hell would buy a hard drive that is "just big enough" to hold the file? What if you needed to add to it? Why risk it?

I mean if you are going on a 200 mile road trip in a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon, do you go to the gas station and get just 8 gallons of gas in a tank that will hold 16?

I asked my neighbor, a system admin, about this and let me make sure I get the quote right:

"If some idiot IT manager, sys admin, etc let their storage capacity get down to critical levels, ie. less than 5 percent, they are asking for trouble. But guess what, if they make a mistake, they will only make it once, cause at my company, they would lose their job."

 

[Greg_R]

Show me a real example of how the consumer is harmed by not getting his true number of GBs. Don't tell me about car colors, don't tell me about gas mileage. Show me where the number of GBs matters to your well being.

OK. Let's say I want to build a Terabyte HDD array. I go down to my local computer store and pick up 5 200GB HDDs. Guess what? I only have ~930GB. A 70GB HDD costs ~$70 so that is how much money I'm getting screwed out of. This extra $5-$20 margin on each drive directly benefits the HD manufacturers (at the expense of the consumers). Why should I give the HDD manufacturers an extra $20 for each drive I purchase when I am not receiving product for that money???

 

[John_Berger]

You've really sunk to a new low.

At least I'm informed. and I'm looking at the big picture, and not my own little bubble.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Let's say you buy a large Pizza

What's a large pizza? Is it defined by circumference or weight? Is it obvious two pieces are missing? Or was it cut different than normal? If the driver ate two pieces of pizza out of mine while delivering it, I'd be a little pissed off. But that's completely different. What we're talking about here is two different people make two different pizzas, one using a bit less dough so it ends up being a bit smaller. Are you going to complain about that? I'm not, I probably won't even notice.

Hard drive capacities are one of those things where an approximation is good enough. If you get into the specs you find the actual size, isn't that good enough? How many decimal places should they put in the add? Is 18.6 good enough? Or should they say 18.6433201? What rounding method should they use if one decimal place is ok? How specific do they need to be?

Just about every single spec used with computers is subject to interpertation and could result in a law suit if we get carried away with it. And I think this is a case where lawyers are getting carried away with it.

 

[RobertR]

So, the prevention of false advertising doesn't warrant legal action? Marketers will LOVE hearing that.

I think it's very presumptuous for you to decide for the common computer user that this issue is soooooo important even though he doesn't care, so much so that you want him to spend tax dollars (not to mention time and money from the computer companies) on it. I have news for you: people are STILL going to think of 1E9 as a gigabyte, regardless of this silly lawsuit.

 

[John_Berger]

Why in the hell would buy a hard drive that is "just big enough" to hold the file? What if you needed to add to it? Why risk it?

The point is that the hard drive is advertised as 20 GB when it's NOT! The point has NOTHING - not one thing - to do with WHY that hard drive was bought over another! It is 100% about improperly representing the actual storage capacity of the hard drive!

THAT is what this thread and its lawsuit are SUPPOSED to be about!

But, hey, if the public doesn't care and is content in their apathy...

 

[RobertR]

But, hey, if the public doesn't care and is content in their apathy...

I think Mr. Berger FINALLY gets the point. People aren't harmed, they don't perceive harm, they don't care..

So focus on making better hardware/software, already.

 

[John_Berger]

I think it's very presumptuous for you to decide for the common computer user that this issue is soooooo important even though doesn't care, so much so that you want him to spend tax dollars (not to mention time and money from the computer companies) on it.

Please take the blinders off. This is all about false advertising which has an impact on many things because it's not restricted to a single product. The product in question in this case just so happens to be a hard drive.

 

[MarkHastings]

How many decimal places should they put in the add? Is 18.6 good enough? Or should they say 18.6433201?

because 18.6433201 gives you MORE than what the box says - Saying 20GB and only giving you 18.6 gives you LESS. That's the big difference.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Well John you're the one insulting me because of what you think are ludicrous examples, but the ones you have made are far worse.

Let's say I want to build a Terabyte HDD array. I go down to my local computer store and pick up 5 200GB HDDs. Guess what? I only have ~930GB. A 70GB HDD costs ~$70 so that is how much money I'm getting screwed out of.

Did you need exactly 1 Terabyte? Did you price the contract with the client based on exactly 1 Terabyte? If your client said "I need at least 1 Terabyte" you better get them at least 1 Terabyte. And if you know how to build a Terabyte HDD array, you better know how many bytes are actually in a Terabyte. And you better have some redundancy, and perhaps a good RAID system.

Anybody who worries about getting every last byte of data out of their storage space is stupid. You never want to run out, that's far to dangerous, so you always plan ahead.

Thanks for comment Neal. I think that really sums up the matter.

 

[John_Berger]

I think Mr. Berger FINALLY gets the point. People aren't harmed, they don't perceive harm, they don't care..

No, Mr. Berger is tired of the arrogance of people on this thread who refuse to look at the big picture that this lawsuit goes beyond a hard drive and refuse to acknowledge that they were wrong (God fobid) so instead come up with totally asinine examples and excuses to save their egos, hence the quite accurate comparison to RIAA and DD/DTS threads. Yelling at a brick wall is not exactly what I had planned on doing throughout this thread, but it's what I ended up doing anyway.