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Link: Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims
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Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims
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Category: News and Press Releases
Link: Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims
Posted on MacBytes.com
Approved by arn
Uhmmm
These people are just realizing this now? Are they a bunch of newbies who have failed to read the small print which tells them of this size discrepancy?
These people are just realizing this now? Are they a bunch of newbies who have failed to read the small print which tells them of this size discrepancy?
What a bunch of friggen idiots. Suppose Apple or anybody else says you get an 80gig HD in your computer. Just because you get the computer PRE INSTALLED AND INITIALIZED with the OS and other packaged crap doesnt mean you arent getting an 80gb HD. And even if you bought a brand new blank non-initialized 80gb HD, you still dont get a full 80gb. Thats how it works. Because 1k is like 1024 bytes and so on and so forth. Somebody needs to tell these morons that you get an 80gb HD but it has **** on it.. so it wont hold all that other crap. What a bunch of **** heads.
no basis
First, the suits are for the most part agains the wrong companies. With the exception of IBM, I don't think any of those computer manufacturers makes their own drives, they purchase drives from vendors. Thos vendors decide how to specify the capacity, and it's generally accepted in the HD inustry that they no longer use base 2 math when talking about size.
Second, Apple includes, and I'd guess that most other computer manufacturers do also, a disclaimer on their specification pages and in marketing literature along the lines of "1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less". This is usually noted as a footnote wherever they mention hard disk capacity.
The suits seem to me like they'll be tossed out after a response has been filed by the companies. This is no-where near the magnitude of the 20" monitor that's only got 16" of viewable area, THAT deserved a suit.
First, the suits are for the most part agains the wrong companies. With the exception of IBM, I don't think any of those computer manufacturers makes their own drives, they purchase drives from vendors. Thos vendors decide how to specify the capacity, and it's generally accepted in the HD inustry that they no longer use base 2 math when talking about size.
Second, Apple includes, and I'd guess that most other computer manufacturers do also, a disclaimer on their specification pages and in marketing literature along the lines of "1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less". This is usually noted as a footnote wherever they mention hard disk capacity.
The suits seem to me like they'll be tossed out after a response has been filed by the companies. This is no-where near the magnitude of the 20" monitor that's only got 16" of viewable area, THAT deserved a suit.
We had this issue since teh hard drive was intorduced. Why now? why bitch about it now? retards really read the not so fine print
Of course if you look at the Devices and Volumes tab in the Apple System Profiler you will see that disk and volume size information is listed in both formats as shown in the screen clipping:
![diskinfo.jpg]()
Not again...
This issue has been brought up in court so many times I can't even count. Even when I was doing PC phone tech support back in 1992 (shudder...) we saw the news that PC manufacturers were being sued for this.
A while ago, someone was talking about hard drive manufacturers going to "giblibytes"... anyone remember that? Giblibytes is supposed to be the "correct" conversion of bytes-to-gigabytes.
How does this work? Instead of dividing the number of bytes by 1,000,000 as they do now, they divide the number of bytes by 1,048,576 which represents gigabytes more accurately.
Therefore a 250GB byte hard drive is really a 238.42GibliByte hard drive.
This issue has been brought up in court so many times I can't even count. Even when I was doing PC phone tech support back in 1992 (shudder...) we saw the news that PC manufacturers were being sued for this.
A while ago, someone was talking about hard drive manufacturers going to "giblibytes"... anyone remember that? Giblibytes is supposed to be the "correct" conversion of bytes-to-gigabytes.
How does this work? Instead of dividing the number of bytes by 1,000,000 as they do now, they divide the number of bytes by 1,048,576 which represents gigabytes more accurately.
Therefore a 250GB byte hard drive is really a 238.42GibliByte hard drive.
this is nuts. people cant read. its right there, and it's common friggin sense and they still dont get it..."misleading" riiiight...
ill gotten profits...LIKE WHAT?!
ATTORNEYS FEES-i should have known.
ill gotten profits...LIKE WHAT?!
ATTORNEYS FEES-i should have known.
Apple among other computer companies getting sued for 'false' hard drive specs
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=3470394
Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Size Claims
Thu September 18, 2003 05:00 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives.
The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court against Apple Computer Inc. AAPL.O , Dell Inc. DELL.O , Gateway Inc. GTW.N , Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N , IBM IBM.N , Sharp Corp. 6753.T , Sony Corp. 6758.T and Toshiba Corp. 6502.T
The lawsuit brought by Los Angeles residents Lanchau Dan, Adam Selkowitz, Tim Swan and John Zahabian centers around the way that computer hard drives are described by manufacturers.
Representatives of the eight defendants were not immediately available to comment.
According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
The result is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs said this difference in convention is deceptive and leaves buyers with less storage than they thought they were getting when they purchased their computers.
For example, when a consumer buys what he thinks is a 150 gigabyte hard drive, the plaintiffs said, he actually gets only 140 gigabytes of storage space. That missing 10 gigabytes, they claim, could store an extra 2,000 digitized songs or 20,000 pictures.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the purportedly unfair marketing practices, an order requiring the defendants to disclose their practices to the public, restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees.
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=3470394
Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Size Claims
Thu September 18, 2003 05:00 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives.
The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court against Apple Computer Inc. AAPL.O , Dell Inc. DELL.O , Gateway Inc. GTW.N , Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N , IBM IBM.N , Sharp Corp. 6753.T , Sony Corp. 6758.T and Toshiba Corp. 6502.T
The lawsuit brought by Los Angeles residents Lanchau Dan, Adam Selkowitz, Tim Swan and John Zahabian centers around the way that computer hard drives are described by manufacturers.
Representatives of the eight defendants were not immediately available to comment.
According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
The result is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs said this difference in convention is deceptive and leaves buyers with less storage than they thought they were getting when they purchased their computers.
For example, when a consumer buys what he thinks is a 150 gigabyte hard drive, the plaintiffs said, he actually gets only 140 gigabytes of storage space. That missing 10 gigabytes, they claim, could store an extra 2,000 digitized songs or 20,000 pictures.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the purportedly unfair marketing practices, an order requiring the defendants to disclose their practices to the public, restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees.
it's imossible to state a true set hd size, they all vary independently so it would be pretty hard to market that
instead of everyone suing everyone else for the stupidist things we should all try and inform ourselves a little better.
instead of everyone suing everyone else for the stupidist things we should all try and inform ourselves a little better.
Its true that no two hard drives have the same capacity. But, must they give the size where 1GB = 1000 MB instead of the true 1GB = 1024MB. Its the way it should be, or place an astrisk next to the size number and state somewhere that its an estmated size. Also, its the exact opposite when you talk RAM size. The actual size is larger then the advertized size.
TEG
TEG
Well, also, in essence they are not lying. But this is an issue that kind of sucks, though I don't think the blame should be placed on the computer manufacturers. If anyone is to blame, it's the hard drive manufacturers, because that's where the discrepancy begins.
This was brought up at another forum I visit and some one brought up an interesting point. The HDD manufacturers are correct, it's the computers/software thats wrong. Mega is a prefix meaning thousand so a megabyte is literally 1000 bytes. But when it comes to software/computers one megabyte is 1024 bytes which is incorrect/a misnomer.
Lethal
Lethal
I'm looking at a G5 pamphlet I picked up at CompUSA the other day. On the spec sheet it says "80GB Serial ATA" with a superscript '5' next to it. If you look up the note inside for number 5 it says "5: 1GB=1 billion bytes, actual formatted capacity less" Thus Apple is telling you right up front that the actual capacity is less. Always read the fine print before suing someone.
Hmmm...
Didn't similar people sue computer companies and display manufacturers on display size.
Doesn't...
So if the say...
Who are they gonna sue next, the builders of the Hoover Dam?
For improperly labeling how much water it'll hold, since the "exact" capacity is constantly in flux. As is the "current" amount.
Didn't similar people sue computer companies and display manufacturers on display size.
Doesn't...
...satisfy the details of the lawsuit.
So if the say...
...that it would satisfy any similar lawsuit.
Who are they gonna sue next, the builders of the Hoover Dam?
For improperly labeling how much water it'll hold, since the "exact" capacity is constantly in flux. As is the "current" amount.
I swear, people are just idiots. Isn't it common knowledge that it is not going to be an *exact* number? By next they will sue for saying the 4 advertised hours of battery life only gets 3.7 hours.
really you would do better by suing over the term "c," since i think some scientists manages to slow down some photons. the speed of light may actually vary in those circumstances, so the formula is faulty.
Good, I doubt they will win but maybe it will convince the HD makers to use 1024 instead of 1000, or not screw us out of a few gigs for "formatting"