Kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and so on have never been broadly used, I'm quite certain. Everyone besides the people selling hard drives have 'always' used multiples of 1024.
@607, from my very first exposure to CPU's, the 8080, a Kilobyte referred to 1024 bytes, and so on. I don't understand where the kiibi (sp?) came from. I guess it's time to ask Google when the new, to me, terms started being used.
Looks like base 1,000 is the norm nowadays. I just wish Microsoft would either change the calculation of the larger number to reflect multiples of 1,000 or change all the units to the 1,024 variant. At least Linux has the decency to display sizes in both, where appropriate. Windows however... :\
Exactly, farmerguyson. They have always referred to 1024 bytes, so indeed it's a nomenclature change. I think the nomenclature change is important, because kilo, mega, giga et cetera come from the SI system, in which they stand for thousand, million, billion/milliard and so forth.
It is confusing if they mean something different in computing. And whereas the difference between 1024 and 1000 is not so big, it adds up, as you can see in my screenshot.
Agreed 607. Shame Microsoft doesn't care much and offer measurements in both. I've seen the 1,024 and 1,000 variants used appropriately in Linux. Now that we're talking about it, I wonder what Apple has done with OSX and how those bytes are measured?
I'm just curious if Steve Jobs thought ahead and had his operating system support and display both numbers, where appropriate, rather than the cheap way Microsoft did it with Windows.
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