New Brand of Hard Drives
Have you ever bought a 500 Gigabyte external hard drive, only to discover that once you formatted it, it only had around 465 Gigabytes of actual space on it? That's not some freak accident. Hard drive manufacturers have long been taking advantage of a difference between two separate ways of calculating space on a hard drive. They use decimal powers of ten in their advertisements, but the binary powers of two in the actual space computation. Notable programmer Jeff Atwood has written an article that sums this issue up very well.
Most of us are familiar with the "computer jerk" archetype. The IT guy at your company might be dripping with the stereotypes, but it's present in an embarrassingly large number of people in the computer industry. I have to admit, over the years, I myself have probably slipped into "computer jerk" mode with a non-tech-savvy person without meaning to.
What surprises me is that the companies that manufacture and sell hard drives haven't realized just how huge the egos of most computer people are. Often, they're the ones making the purchasing decisions at companies. More often, they're the ones making product recommendations to friends and family about which brand of anything they should buy for their computer.
If Western Digital made a new brand of hard drive that actually held as much as advertised, I think it would be a hit among tech people. They just need to make one that holds 550 Gigs of storage space (roughly), but actually holds a little more than 500 Gigs, it would give the computer science geeks a product to tell people about, and make them feel a little superior in the process.
"Oh, don't get the regular Western Digital; get the HonestSpace brand. You actually get the advertised number of Gigabytes with one of those. The rest of 'em, they're just ripping you off."
Most of us are familiar with the "computer jerk" archetype. The IT guy at your company might be dripping with the stereotypes, but it's present in an embarrassingly large number of people in the computer industry. I have to admit, over the years, I myself have probably slipped into "computer jerk" mode with a non-tech-savvy person without meaning to.
What surprises me is that the companies that manufacture and sell hard drives haven't realized just how huge the egos of most computer people are. Often, they're the ones making the purchasing decisions at companies. More often, they're the ones making product recommendations to friends and family about which brand of anything they should buy for their computer.
If Western Digital made a new brand of hard drive that actually held as much as advertised, I think it would be a hit among tech people. They just need to make one that holds 550 Gigs of storage space (roughly), but actually holds a little more than 500 Gigs, it would give the computer science geeks a product to tell people about, and make them feel a little superior in the process.
"Oh, don't get the regular Western Digital; get the HonestSpace brand. You actually get the advertised number of Gigabytes with one of those. The rest of 'em, they're just ripping you off."