Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Timothy A. Seufert
2001-12-30T04:11:01Z

Timo Jantunen <jeti@iki.fi> wrote:

>How about IBM. According to the datasheet at
>http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm
>
>Deskstar 120GXP with 120GB capacity has 24125472 sectors (123522416640
>bytes).
>
>That is 123.5GB if G=10^9 but 120.6GB if G=10^6*2^10 (and merely
>115.0GB if G=2^30).
>
>Horrible? Yes.
>
>(The same is true for 40GB and 80GB versions of 120GXP, and my (older
>model) 30GB and 40GB IBM drives.)

Please click on the "Models" link on the page you linked to and
reconsider your position. For abstract marketing purposes such as
model and family names, IBM currently prefers to round down to 5GB
increments, probably because 123.52GXP doesn't roll off the tongue
quite so well as 120GXP. That doesn't mean they use anything other
than 1GB = 10^9 bytes when they get around to telling you exactly how
much each model holds.

(It hasn't always been round-to-5GB. For example one older family
was the 22GXP. But that's easy to understand: when the maximum
shipping capacity was 22GB it presumably made more sense to round to
1GB figures.)
--
Tim Seufert