How much is a Gigabyte?

A

Abe

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Up the creek without a GB
Hi All,

My experience has always been that a GB is 1073741824 bytes (1024^3). Are all ADSL suppliers (Telkom included) calling a GB 1000000000 bytes (10^9). It seems that both options are correct.

It works out to 73Meg difference per GB and for someone with a 10GB limit that is 3/4 of a GB.

Wikipedia is in both minds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GigaByte

Cheers

Dean
 
A Gigabyte is actually 1000MB (1024MB is actually called something else), but Windows and other OS's use 1024MB as the measure, whereas drive manufacturers use 1000MB; that's why when you format a 250GB drive in Windows it comes up as 233GB.

ADSL suppliers all use 1024MB as the measure.
 
wierd cause when i was using them i did not get capped when i went over what would have been capped if it were 1000000000 bytes.. then again that was with a standard 3GB acc.
 
Abe said:
Not quite. Axxess use 1000000000 bytes as a GB.

Cheers

Dean
Click to expand...

Er... doesn't that then mean that (if they cap or bill per gigabyte) they have inflated the price of their offering by 30%?

Juice
 
Juice said:
Er... doesn't that then mean that (if they cap or bill per gigabyte) they have inflated the price of their offering by 30%?

Juice
Click to expand...
Their price is 7% higher. I am on a 4GB package and have been capped on 4021221075 bytes which is still under 4294967296 bytes (1024^3 * 4). What makes it worse is that the 4021221075 is not accurate. There is 107924728 bytes on my account that should not be there.

Cheers

Dean
 
A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix giga-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one billion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated GB in writing (not to be confused with Gb, which is used for gigabit) and gig in writing or speech.

There are two slightly different definitions of the size of a gigabyte in use:

1,000,000,000 bytes or 109 bytes is the decimal definition used in telecommunications (such as network speeds) and some computer storage manufacturers (such as hard disks and flash drives). This usage is compatible with SI.
1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 10243, or 230 bytes. This is the definition used for computer memory sizes, and most often used in computer engineering, computer science, and most aspects of computer operating systems. The IEC recommends that this unit should instead be called a gibibyte (abbreviated GiB), as it conflicts with SI units used for bus speeds and the like.
Click to expand...

More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
 
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