Kilo - 10^3 (1,000)
Mega - 10^6 (1,000,000)
Giga - 10^9 (1,000,000,000)
Tera - 10^12 (1,000,000,000,000)
In the computer world, these were converted to the closest power of 2:
(K) 2^10 = 1,024
(M) 2^20 = 1,048,576
(G) 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
(T) 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
If a vendor says a drive is "540 MB" or even "540 MegaBytes", he could
realistically mean either. Most will actually say (in small print) "XXXX
corporation defines MB as 1,000,000 Bytes".
Even if they didn't define 'MB', you should consider yourself lucky if
they actually gave you 2^20 bits, rather than 10^6 :-)
Having two conflicting definitions for the power prefixes (Kilo, Mega,
etc) is sometimes confusing - but always annoying :-)
Anyway, why are we discussing this here? Let's forget about it, or leave
it for another mailing list :P
-Taner
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