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

Chris Lockwood

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The only sarcasm in my last post was the last sentence. My point was that the ad described exactly what you get, as do many computer or hard drive ads. Can someone post an example of a deceptive ad in this category?

That lawsuit is based on the premise that customers are being misled because they see an ad for a "20GB" drive and expect it to hold not 20 billion bytes but some power of two higher than that. Since most people don't know that 2nd definition, it can't be shown they were misled, especially when the ads typically state that 1GB = 1 billion. The ad would only be deceptive if people think 20GB does not mean 20 billion, or if the drive really holds less than 20 billion. But in reality most drives don't hold a precise round number of bytes but actually a bit more as in the example I posted.

Is the constant raising of drive capacity and lowering of prices part of the deception? Nobody has addressed that.
 

MarkHastings

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Can someone post an example of a deceptive ad in this category?
I can't post an exact example, but I can create a situation based on my own personal experiences and facts about the internet:

Let's look at internet shopping. Just look at all the price comparison engines there are. Take 2 companies that have an 18.6 GB HD -

Company A sells the drive for $190 and advertises it as an 18.6 GB HD
whereas
Company B sells it for $195 and advertises it as a 20 GB HD (with it's 1 GB = 1 billion bytes fine print).

So company A sounds like they're selling at $10.21 per Gig and Company B is selling at $9.75 per Gig.

In an online comparison, company B would seem overall cheaper, yet they are actually selling the same exact Hard Drive as Company A for $5 more.


Since a lot of online sites (especially the cheaper ones) don't give a whole heck of a lot of info, there can be times when someone is looking for a bargain and may actually be spending MORE money than they should.

Again, maybe people like us would have enough knowledge to do some more searching to find out exact numbers, but when the average consumer is shown two hard drives for the same price and one boasts 18.6 GB and the other boasts 20GB, they'll almost always go with the (seemingly) bigger drive.

I see this "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" only as a tactic to make things seem larger than they are. As long as everyone does it, I guess it's ok, but considering there seems to be no standard (i.e. the companies are choosing to put fine print to make up whatever they'd like), than I say YES we need to do something legally about it to clear up this mess.
 

Mike Poindexter

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[oops, I didn't check the date on this thread when I replied and didn't realize it was so old. I was doing a search on Terabyte and it came up.]


It is amazing how people are not seeing this case clearly and those who do cannot defend it properly without ridiculous arguments like "I will declare blue=purple" to try and show it.

There has been harm done already. People have not gotten what they paid for.

All hard drives are short changing people in excess of 6.8% of what they are paying for. I built a server for the purpose of storing my media, but rather than getting 3,500 GB of storage, I only got 3,259.63 GB. That drives my cost per GB up for all data on the server. That is harm and easily able to be calculated into actual damages.

As for the question of if somebody actually measures out the soda in a can of Coke, they do. In fact, you will find it will be slightly more than 12oz. This is called overage. There is overage because if the department of weights and measures goes into a store and checks your product and finds you to be slightly under weight you get one hell of a fine. I know because I am in the food business. We package our nuts in 1lb. bags, but average 1.02lb per bag because we cannot have any single bag below .995 of a pound. Even if we have one bag at .995, we still have to average over 1lb across multiple bags. The fines are several thousand dollars.

Giga=1,000,000,000. Correct, but you are not buying a giga. You are buying a hard drive listed in GB. The term for GB must be defined per the use of the item. For a computer item, that would be GB=2^30 bytes. Terms change depending on where you use them. How much is a ton? 2,000 pounds in the US, but 2200 lbs. (roughly) in Europe because here one ton =2,000 pounds, but in the EU, one ton = one thousand KG.

A GB on a computer is 2^30. To sell a computer part that is going to be used to store computer GB's but advertise them in a higher number for marketing reasons is deceptive and wrong. How much memory do you get if you buy 1GB of RAM? Not 1 billion bytes of RAM, but 2^30 bytes.

This is not at all related to colors of cars or sizes of computer monitors. Please don't dilute the arguement.

It does not matter if people are going to use all their space or not. If I short somebody product, I am liable. Even if they didn't finish the bag, I am responsible to make certain it contains at least the advertised amount. I cannot claim different weights because of locale. (Weight is gravity based, not mass based, so something will weigh less in Denver than it will in Los Angeles - not much but when you are on the border and the fine is $10,000 you might come up with anything to save your ass and find one milligram of weight!)

The hard drive manufacturers have intentionally gone about skinning the public in excess of 6.5% for a long time. I will be glad when it will finally stop.

In short, your computer defines a GB as 2^30 bytes and any part for your computer that advertises a certain GB should use the same system of measuring. Any shortage to the consumer is harm and can easily be calculated as damages by figuring the percentage short times the entire financial outlay of the purchase. To hide under the guise of a footnote may be legal from a "shortage" issue, but it is still false advertisement in that is purports to be larger than it is by redefining the term to a more favorable one. This can be fixed with a court ruling or by having a law passed. A court decision is much quicker, less costly to the U.S. taxpayers and probably more likely to have a fair ruling of the interpretation of the existing laws vs. having Congress pass a fair law that isn't biased towards a group that donates money.

As for the question of more important laws to enforce or more important cases to hear, that arguement doesn't apply. It is similar to people telling the cop pulling them over for speeding that they should be out catching murderers. All laws must be enforced if you have a person asking for them to be. A complaint has been lodged and it is the job of the police and the courts to protect the people by enforcing the laws that have been passed, or in the case of the courts, sometimes declaring a law unconstitutional and therefore illegal. To say there is no harm is just wrong. Just because you do not care about the outcome does not make it frivilous.
 

John Gates

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Speaking as an average reasonably well-educated computer consumer (not a programmer):

I know, understand, and care about the fact that a 20 GB HDD is twice as big as a 10 GB HDD, and a 80 GB drive is twice the size of a 40 GB drive. That's all I really want to know.

I don't really care how many actual bits there are. If I want to know, I can find out easily enough.

I'm completely comfortable with the "marketing convention" of GB the way they are. I am completely opposed to this kind of lawsuit. As a consumer, i see zero benefit.

If the lawsuit succeeds, I get info I don't really want or need AND I pay more for my hard drives. The costs of defending these stupid suits, reprinting product labels and packaging, etc, are folded into every product we buy, folks.

There are so many other worthwhile things to invest lawsuit time in. There are also much more interesting and valuable thigns to argue about. Surely there is a better use for all the "gigabyte passion" in this thread. ;)

Just my 2 cents,

John G
 

MarkHastings

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I am completely opposed to this kind of lawsuit. As a consumer, i see zero benefit.
This isn't a case of "the minute difference doesn't make much difference to most people", it's a matter of lying and deception. To me, deception is 110% worthy of any law suit.

EXAMPLE: Most people have no need (or could care less) for the ability to drive thier car at 190mph, but if a company boasts that thier car can do 190mph and it CAN'T, then there is plenty of reason why they should be sued.

It shouldn't matter if nobody is ever going to drive that fast - that's not the point.
 

Tekara

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for me it's not the hardrive capacity that bothers me, it's the flash memory that bothers me. I go and buy a 512mb flash card for over 200$ and all I get is 483mb of memory, that's a whopping 5.7% difference and a fair chunk of change to foot out.

what bothers me more is that this will continue getting worse too, with 1gb and 2gb flash cards comming out to facilitate 5+mp cameras, PDA's etc. the differences in what your buying and what your getting are going to become pretty bad.
 

Mike Poindexter

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To you, it sounds like a stupid suit, but if this bled over to other industries, you would possibly not feel the same.

Suppose you bought a pound of hamburger, but found that you only got 373 grams instead of 454 grams because they decided to sell it by troy weight? Would this not be considered deceptive marketing?

The costs of packaging won't go up one bit because it will affect future hard drive sales. By the time it passes through the courts, the hard drive manufacturers would have time to adjust or at least put a new sticker over the "80GB" label on the front.

Something that has no benefit with a large cost would be country of origin labeling on all produce, which has been passed but if being fought by the industry, as it is not cheap to label every apple with a Produced in the U.S.A. sticker, yet you can charge no more for said apple.
 

Glenn Overholt

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Got to go with John on this one. This is outright silly. The only reason you can't use what is 'sold' is because of your OS.

A drive mfg can't state the XP figure because not everybody runs XP. If they did it that way they would have to list the max bytes for every OS known to man, and then would get sued because they left one out.

Glenn
 

John Gates

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Suppose you bought a pound of hamburger, but found that you only got 373 grams instead of 454 grams because they decided to sell it by troy weight? Would this not be considered deceptive marketing?
Mike, I understand your position, I just don't agree.

In the above example, it wouldn't matter at all as long as there was an industry standard. If all burger joints who sold a pound burger sold you the same 373 grams because the word "pound" means something that is commonly understood in the hamburger industry, there really is no problem. When you buy a pounder, as a consumer, you know what your'e getting because all pounders are the same. Same is true in the HD industry. There is an accepted industry standard for measuring the volume of a HD.

I suggest that anyone who is going to split hairs and notice the "deficiency and deception" is educated enough to make an informed decision about how much HD space they need. Do your math and buy enough flash memory or HD space.

Profit margins in the HDD manufacturing industry are very tiny to begin with. If you think the costs of this suit won't be passed to consumers, I'd say you are naive.

John G
 

Mike Poindexter

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This is not about the use inside my OS. It isn't about using "what is sold" but that they are selling something using deceptive advertising be defining a GB as one billion bytes instead of a GB as what all computer operating systems define it as - 2^30 bytes.

I understand the XP overhead of a drive, but even then, it is negligible compared to what is lost with the marketing GB vs. a computer GB.
 

Neal_C

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Ok, on the hamburger scenario...when you look at useable form, the hard drive and hamburger meat comparison is actually the same.

You buy an 80gb drive, but the OS only reads 76gb (or whatever the actual number is). You buy 1lb of hamburger meat, but when you cook it, you don't end up with a 1lb burger...some of the fat is cooked off and you are left with less than a pound. Raw hamburger is not useable, it must be cooked and lose some of its weight in order to be useable. If you want a true 1lb burger, you have to buy more than 1lb of meat.

I'm against this lawsuit...its a joke and a waste of time.
 

Mike Poindexter

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John, I am not naive, but the cost of this suit is zero if they would just agree to sell the hard drives by the number of computer GB's they are instead of a marketing GB. They are choosing to fight this, so it is their choice to pay the costs of the legal battle.

As for the above example on troy weight, yes, it is deceptive because troy weight is not used for food.

By that same token, the convention used in the computer industry is that 1KB=2^10 bytes, 1MB=2^20 bytes and 1GB=2^30 bytes. It is that way with memory. It is that way with the operating systems listed below:

Microsoft Windows: 3.1, 95, 98, ME, NT3.51, NT4.0, 2000, 2003, XP, CE, CE Pro, CE 2002, CE 2003
MS-DOS
DR-DOS
Linux
Unix
ProDOS
GS/OS
Macintosh: System 7, OS/X
SCO-XENIX

Can you name an operating system that defines a GB of disk space as something other than 2^30 bytes?

Computer memory sellers use 2^30 for a GB, 2^20 for a MB and 2^10 for a KB. It has been this way since before I was into computers back in the mid 80's. ROM chips are the same way. Intel has used a KB=2^10 ever since day one when referring to the RAM Cache on their processors.

The convention for what a GB has already been set. The hard drive manufacturers are being targeted (indirectly by this lawsuit) for not following the convention.

The only possible area where computers might not follow the binary version of a K is in communications, where there are systems not in the computer domain (telecom) that have used a traditional decimal system that predates the computer industry common use of the term.

Name a place where a hard drive is *used* that does not measure its capacity in binary (1GB=2^30 bytes). There are no uses for hard drives outside of a computer (or embedded device which is really just a specialized computer). Since all use is for binary counted storage, they should be sold under that calculation of storage capacity.

In a few years, we will be skinned even more when TB is going to be counted by the computers as 2^40 bytes, while drives are sold as 10^12 bytes. The difference there is 9.95%, much more than the current 7.37%.

Using Moore's law of doubling every 18 months, when we hit drive spaces of 2^170 bytes, marketing will use 10^51. I don't know what size that works out to, but in 198 years, a drive that sells as 2 Uberbytes will in fact store only one Uberbyte. Will it be OK then? If you carry on the progression, in 400 years, a drive that is 4 super uberbytes will store less than one super uberbyte. At some point, they have to be put into sync. If it is wrong in a thousand years, it is wrong now. Fix it now.
 

Mike Poindexter

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Neal, the hamaburger must be cooked, as the drive must be formatted. That is not the point. The point is that before the hard drive is formatted, it is not 20GB, it is 18.6. After formatting, it may only be 18.4, but before formatting, it is 18.6, not 20.

If McDonalds was putting only 3/16 of a pound of raw hamberger meat on the grill, cooking it and then calling it a quarter pounder, that would be illegal. To say that is is a quarter of a troy pound or some other non-standard convention in the industry would not shield them from their deceptive ways.

This isn't about what you think is a joke or is a waste of time. It is about if it is fair to sell a part under an inflated statistic. You cannot fit 20GB on a 20GB drive even when taking into account the overhead of formatting the drive for an operating system.

The prima facia case has merit, so this should go to trial.
 

Neal_C

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I just voiced my opinion, as you are doing...so don't tell me what this is or isn't.

You think it should go to court, I think it is a waste of time. We both have opinions on the matter.

So are you planning on really being involved in getting this to court? You gonna help flip the bill for lawyer fees? Or are you just back seat driving on this one?
 

Mike Poindexter

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The lawyers are likely taking this case Pro Bono, as most class action suits are.

I didn't find out about this until the ball was in motion, but I have always been against the hard drive manufacturers' deceptive capacity claims. I have felt that it isn't accurate and while they try to hide behind a disclaimer, it is still dishonest.

I actually don't have anything to gain on this case, as I build all of my computers and the computers at my work. I would only be able to gain something if they directly sued the hard drive makers, which they have not done. The lawyers have probably realized that the disclaimer of redefining a GB is enough protection to make a win more difficult. Had I purchased a Dell, I would support this suit out of my own interests. As it is now, I support it not because I have a personal gain at stake but because I think it is right.

You think it is a waste of time, but it is also a waste of time to chase down a $0.01 overcharge on your electric bill. It certainly adds up if you do it to everyone, though, and is worth doing if you can get away with it. That is why we have consumer protection agencies, civil courts, etc. It would be a waste of my time to try and get my extra 400GB I have been shortchanged over my life so far, but just because it isn't worth my personal time to chase it down doesn't make what they are doing right.

The question isn't if you think it is a waste of time or if you feel it is frivilous. It is if you think the people have a right to complain that a computer advertised as having 40GB of hard disk storage only has 37.2GB of storage space prior to formatting. They certainly are not selling computers with 256MG RAM as having 268 MB RAM, now are they?
 

Glenn Overholt

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I just got this from a Dell page on a computer.

Processor Pentium 4 at 2.4ghz
Hard drive 40gb (with a footnote) which reads:
For hard drives, GB means 1 billion bytes, total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

? Is the 2.4 ghz CPU exactly 2.4 ghz? I'll bet it isn't, but as for the hard drive, what should they say?

Should it read 1 billion bytes - base 10? Would that help the average consumer?

I think not. A buyer would say, What the f**k is a base 10? So they call Dell up and ask. Who here would be willing to explain to that person why they can advertise a base 10 figure when computers only work on base 2. Base 2? What's a base 2?

I am sure that they did it to avoid confusion. If you know how bytes work, you are going to know how much space is actually there.

How about this? You buy a car that is advertised as sitting 6 comfortably, but if I, and 5 of my friends, all weigh over 350 lbs, would we fit - comfortably?

I think not. They'd end up adding a footnote to that too, and in no time at all, we'd be flooded with footnotes explaining exactly what they mean. I think we all have enough to do instead of reading all of the exceptions in fine print.

Glenn
 

Mike Poindexter

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Agreed. They wouldn't need the footnote at all if they had been using base 2, though. Notice that they don't need a footnote for RAM to say that 256MB, where a MB = 2^20.

People who don't know the difference between base 10 and base 2 are frequently in the group that don't get too involved in the specs of the computer.

1 billion bytes - base 10 is redundant, as a billion is base 10.

I wonder if next they will try to sell their 250GB drives as 4000Gb, figuring people won't pick up on how they have switched from selling bytes to bits.

If you and 5 of your friends are all over 350 and sit in a car, it will likely have bigger problems than sitting comfortably. You will probably need to check the make sure the muffler still clears the reflectors on the road in your new low rider. ;)

FYI, the clock speed on a 2.4GHz processor is 2.4GHz. It is either a 400MHz bus with an 6x multiplier, [400*6=2400] or it is a 533MHz bus with a 4.5x multiplier. The 533 MHz bus is actually 16/3, but is rounded to 533 so[16/3*4.5=2400] it is still 2.4GHz.
 

John_Berger

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A drive mfg can't state the XP figure because not everybody runs XP.
The operating system is irrelveant. All operating systems that I have ever worked with and still work with (totalling over a dozen operating systems and variants) all recognize 1 KB at 1024, 1 MB as 1024^2, and 1 GB as 1024^3. There is no operating system that I know of that recognizes 1 GB as 10^9. Therefore, the hard drive manufacturers are intentionally inflating their numbers to make it look like their hard drive supports capacities that are more than what they should be. Suddenly, the computer isee the hard drive and translates to 1024^3 power which results in what appears to be a loss of capacity.

It's deceptive advertising, plain and simple, whether you agree with the lawsuit or not.
 

John_Berger

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How about this? You buy a car that is advertised as sitting 6 comfortably, but if I, and 5 of my friends, all weigh over 350 lbs, would we fit - comfortably?
I see absolutely no relevance to this argument. A byte cannot take up extra space because of the digital equivalent to overeating. A byte takes up a single byte of space - period. What's at issue here is the improper use of accepted, industry standard terminology for the intentionally deceptive purpose of inflating the percieved storage capacity. In other words, "false advertising" which last time I looked is illegal.
 

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