Re: Partition Problems w/ 810mb HD

[Michael Verne/VENTANA <Michael_Verne/VENTANA.ITP@lgate.vmedia.com>]

".....Michael, you say that older smaller drives have more honest labels, but
why should you think that the peculoiar computer use of mega-byte which
is a misuse of a prefix with centuries of precedent is more honest. I
personally prefer the reversion to the standard use of mega for disks.
That's because the "small" discrepancy between 1024 and 1000 becomes
larger and hard to figure for multi-gigabyte disks.

Real data use is related to the real world, for example, if I have a 
document that is a million characters long, it needs a million characters
of disk storage, not a megabyte in the "wrong" computer sense.

I find the claim that this is deliberately deceptive to be without
foundation!...."

~~~~~~~~~~

it is more honest precisely because of the centuries of precedent.  if 
"MB=million bytes" were a new standard, then I'd agree with you that it's 
better, but the point is that it's not standard.  As long as os utilities, 
system board bios's, and software packages' "system requirements lists" show 
disk capacity in different terms than the disk manufacturer, then there is no 
standard.  if there were a change in the standard, that would have been great 
because, yes, people do understand thousands better than k's, but the fact is 
that showing disk capacity in million bytes and calling it "MB" is deceptive to 
anyone who is familiar with disk capacity, and, as luck would have it, it's 
deceptive in favor of the disk manufacturer.  he gets to put a larger number on 
his disk than the one that most people are familiar with and most software will 
reflect.

spare me the martyr speech about how disk manufacturers are trying to make life 
easy for the end user.  they're doing the same thing canned food manufacturers 
are doing when, rather than raise the price of an 8oz can, they start selling 
7.5oz cans that don't look any different.  if they use "MB" which has always 
meant megabyte, and still does to bios engineers and software developers, then 
they are being deliberately deceptive.  if the advantage were in favor of the 
consumer, they would not be making an unprofitable change just for our sake.

Michael J. Verne
michael_verne@vmedia.com
Systems Analyst, Ventana Communications Group, Inc.