What kind of free space indication is best?

[Candy]

Your personal opinion of course, not what you think is best for everybody else.

The options are all (none excluded) for a disk with 27500000000 bytes of free space. The choice is mostly the SI or non-SI compliant name of GB and a few other options.

[AJ]

I've gone for the first option for the general case, but think it depends partly on context - if you have a directory listing you may just want the quick summary (27.5GB free). If you have an entire dedicated property page, you may want something a bit more in-depth (supply the GiB value too...).

I think that for the most common case, it's best to just stick with GB because that's what the layman understands - if you are targetting developpers, they may appreciate the value in GiB.

What I would definitely avoid is referring to GiB as GB...

Cheers,
Adam

[JAAman]

What I would definitely avoid is referring to GiB as GB...

wow -- thats exactly opposite of what i was just thinking...

i hate it when people change the (long-standing) names of things -- like this

to me, GB is, and always will be, 1024*1024*1024, 1000*1000*1000 is not a GB, its a billion! this was what i was taught when i started working on computers, and what i continue to use and always will use

the problem with the first one is, its completely irrelevant -- the number of billions of bytes is meaningless information that doesnt serve any purpose at all (and certainly doesnt give you any idea of how much disk space is remaining)

[Candy]

wow -- thats exactly opposite of what i was just thinking...

i hate it when people change the (long-standing) names of things -- like this

If that's your actual base opinion, change your apparent opinion. The 1000^3 definition of giga has been around for about 150 years, whereas the other only emerged some 25-40 years ago. That's exactly why I'm asking this - I'm kind of fed up with the discussion between harddisk manufacturers, computer people and laypeople who just don't get it. There's also for me no logical way you can explain "yeah, the box says 250GB but the computer uses another definition of GB" since there's a rule saying which is right and it's not the computers version of it.

the problem with the first one is, its completely irrelevant -- the number of billions of bytes is meaningless information that doesnt serve any purpose at all (and certainly doesnt give you any idea of how much disk space is remaining)

It's most certainly a relative indication that has a lot of merit. For a lot of people their disk is 250GB and if you only have 25GB free, that means that you've nearly filled it up. That's why I included the bottom two options - for the complete layman who doesn't get what a gigabyte is but who does know that "almost full" is not good and can tell that "15% remaining" isn't a lot.

The huge number one was included for the pedantic or for the people that come from DOS since it's the only exact option in the list.

[AJ]

i hate it when people change the (long-standing) names of things -- like this...

...1000*1000*1000 is not a GB, its a billion!

The traditional English 'billion' is one million million. 1000*1000*1000 is a 'milliard' or one thousand million. Your definition of a billion is therefore a good example of people changing a (very) long-standing name .

Cheers,
Adam

[inflater]

I voted "27.5 GB free", but I don't get it right, that 4 users voted for "25.6 GB free" (not GiB). Well what's better? I think the 1,9 GB is a bit significant, it's better than nothing, currently I have only 2,9GB free on my 60GB hard disk

1 - jedna (one)
10 - desať (ten)
100 - sto (hundred)
1000 - tisíc (tausend)
1000*1000 - milión (million)
1000*1000*1000 - miliarda (milliard)
Power(1000,4) - bilión (billion)
Power(1000,5) - biliarda (billiard - not a pool game! )
Power(1000,6) - trilión (trillion)
Power(1000,7) - triliarda (trilliard)
Power(1000,8) - kvadrilión (quatrillion)
Power(1000,9) - kvadriliarda (quadrilliard)
... Does anybody know what number is next? Because I don't

The traditional English 'billion' is one million million.

Same here

Regards
inflater

[Candy]

i hate it when people change the (long-standing) names of things -- like this...

...1000*1000*1000 is not a GB, its a billion!

The traditional English 'billion' is one million million. 1000*1000*1000 is a 'milliard' or one thousand million. Your definition of a billion is therefore a good example of people changing a (very) long-standing name .

That's just american. Same with not being able to spell colour, not being able to pronounce tomatoes and not knowing about bollocks.

Egad. Firefox spellcheck is US English...

[jnc100]

I voted GiB (alone) because I think including both values can just confuse things and secondly, I still believe GB is still slightly ambiguous. I once heard it defined that 1 GB is 1000 MB in a document that then went on to define 1 MB as 1024 kB, which is just ridiculous. Of course, that's just my opinion for my own preference. For my users, I would probably have a system-wide option somewhere (in a similar vein to locale settings) that defines what format the current user expects, and probably default it to 27.5 GB because most storage devices (apart from RAM) tend to use the 1000 version in their marketing. With such a setting, you could define a libc function to make a string in the current format, or overload cout << to accept a FreeSpace class or something.

Regards,
John.

[inflater]

So, if I understood this correctly,
1 GB = 1024 MB
1 GiB = 1 Gb = 1000 MB

Isn't the word "GiB" just a "Gb" (Gigabit)?

[Candy]

1 Gb == 128 MB

[Khumba]

kB = 10^3, MB = 10^6, GB = 10^9, and they are pronounced like usual: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte.
KiB = 2^10, MiB = 2^20, GiB = 2^30, and they are pronounced: kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte.

See Wikipedia.

[Tyler]

I voted for the Correct form of GB (1024*1024*1024)

Even if the generally accepted use of Giga is to reperesent a billion quantity, it does not make it incorrect in the context of binary numbers. I see no reason why language should be forced to change because Companies hire Liars instead of a Good Marketing department.

I will continue to use Gigabyte to refer to what it means and not what someone else wishes it would mean. I wish Gay would continue to mean joyful, but i doubt any large standards organisation could force people to suddenly forget it now refers to homosexuals.

The same thing applies here, we all know that a Gigabyte is 1073741824 bytes, and i feel for anyone who feels they need to change their understanding in order to appease someone else.

EDIT: Also, anyone who voted for the first is a real wimp. You should pick one way or the other, either GB refers to the binary number or GiB does, don't give into their demands part way and change your understanding but still try to use GB instead of the GiB.

[Brynet-Inc]

I don't know about the rest of you.. but I dislike the way "kibi/mebi/gibi/tebi" sound!

In my opinion, They sound like the type of names one would give Saturday morning cartoon characters...

[Tyler]

I don't know about the rest of you.. but I dislike the way "kibi/mebi/gibi/tebi" sound!

In my opinion, They sound like the type of names one would give Saturday morning cartoon characters...

Ahh yes i can see it now, "Kibi, Mebi, Gibi and Tebi arrrrre the BI-BOYS, fighting crime by day and being camp by night." Classic Childhood entertainment.

[jerryleecooper]

For those who think 1 mb is 1000kb, first. 1 byte is not ten bits, it's eight.
When you'll come to me with your computers computing on bytes that are ten bits on size, kilobytes that have 1000 of theses bytes, then we'll talk about gibi kibi gigli.