Intel Appeals Against EU Antitrust Verdict

[FordGT90Concept]

as bta said, its for stuff they KEPT DOING after the laws where writen, honestly do you think intel stayed on top of the market with the p4 because the p4 was better or cheaper?

It stayed on top because Intel advertised (remember the Blue Man Group playing with a 4?). Advertisments have the ability to convince a buyer that their product is the best thing since sliced cheese. Obviously, their mind might change once they buy the product but, the transaction has already been completed so hindsight is irrelevant from a sales standpoint. XD

 

[hat]

I remember seeing a commercial with the Blue Man Group messing around with a PIII logo lol

 

[Meecrob]

amd did some advertising, but the fact was, you couldnt find an AMD in most bigbox stores, because INTEL bullied the OEM's and Stores into not stocking/promoting them.

Its stupid but the fact is most people really dont even know what a cpu is, they just know they turn on the magic box, and can play games, download porn/music, twitter,myspace,email, exct, and they dont really care if its amd, intel, via, or whatever, just like most people i been running into really couldnt care less if its windows, they know what windows is, but they also refer to ms office as windows...and no they never know what version of office they have unless its 2007, and even then its at best 50/50 shot if they will know if they are even using ms office.

its funny in a sad way, because so many people think they are good with computers and know computers and yet they dont understand them at all really.

oh, and in the late athlon xp/early k8 days i had alot of people try and tell me they had an intel athlon ROFL!!!!

 

[mtosev]

I know, I know........:shadedshu

like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

I had to post this.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The only computer brand I know of that was exclusive to Intel was Dell. Compaq, HP, and Gateway offered AMDs. That was over 50% of the market share up until 2005/2006. If anything, the EU should be suing Dell, not Intel. Dell said that did not offer AMDs because the customers didn't demand AMDs. Once Dell purchased Alienware (when FX-57 was all the rage), they had a paradigm shift and a reason to offer AMDs.


It reminds me of how Seagate got sued for Microsoft's mistake. Seagate labeled their drives properly as GB but Microsoft labeled hard drive capacity improperly by calculating for GiB but displaying GB. Seagate lost the class action suit. They weren't to blame at all for Microsoft's mistake. Now, whenever "GB" is used, the packaging says "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" so that they (I quoted a Verbatim DVD+R DL cakebox there), too, don't get sued for Microsoft's mistake.

 

[Meecrob]

The only computer brand I know of that was exclusive to Intel was Dell. Compaq, HP, and Gateway offered AMDs. That was over 50% of the market share up until 2005/2006. If anything, the EU should be suing Dell, not Intel. Dell said that did not offer AMDs because the customers didn't demand AMDs. Once Dell purchased Alienware (when FX-57 was all the rage), they had a paradigm shift and a reason to offer AMDs.


It reminds me of how Seagate got sued for Microsoft's mistake. Seagate labeled their drives properly as GB but Microsoft labeled hard drive capacity improperly by calculating for GiB but displaying GB. Seagate lost the class action suit. They weren't to blame at all for Microsoft's mistake. Now, whenever "GB" is used, the packaging says "1 GB = 1 billion bytes" so that they (I quoted a Verbatim DVD+R DL cakebox there), too, don't get sued for Microsoft's mistake.

in computers KB/MB/GB have always e been calculated as 1024 tho because its binary, and HDD makers started using the non-tech related definition in order to cheat people, they all ended up doing this, orignaly tho some held out and gave you what you paid for.
Hitchi for example rather then cheat people would sell a 15.7gb drive that when formated was 15+gb

The fact is that HDD makers got themselves in that situation by moving from binary to decimal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

.....In order to address this confusion, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has been promoting the use of the term gibibyte for the binary definition. This position is endorsed by other standards organizations including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) but has seen limited acceptance.

the term gibibyte and related terms are NEW and where not around when computers where invented.

JEDEC dosnt agree with the changes and still revers to a gigabyte as JEDEC memory standards uses the IEEE 100 nomenclatures which defines a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824bytes where hdd makers and now most flashdrive and other storege makers want to use 1,000,000,000 bytes, this is because they can SCREW YOU OVER by saying a drive is larger the it really is.

IMHO drives should be sold at their FORMATED CAPACITY and selling them marked higher should=false advertising and be illegal.

As to the intel thing, intel has threatened most large OEM's, its been proven over and over, they use unethical tactics to get ahead and stay there, It wouldn't be so clear if so much of the rest of the world hadn't found them guilty of it!!!

not that it really matters, when they loose the appeal they will endup making some kinda settlement with the EU, pay a fine, and keep making bank off the market.

all pulling out of the EU would do is hurt intel and help AMD, and that would work for many of us, intel isnt that stupid

just like ms wont pull out of the EU market despite all the fines and changes they had to make to the EU version of windows, because they still make bank off those markets!!!

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Giga- means 1 billion (1,000,000,000) just as mega- means 1 million (1,000,000).
Gibi- means 2^30 (1,073,741,824) just as mebi- means 2^20 (1,048,576).

Prior to ~2002, giga- was used to describe gibi- (incorrectly). The -bi- prefix was introduced and standardized to make it known that gibi- is not equal to giga-. Microsoft has not adapted this but pretty much the rest of the industry has. If not outright adopting it, clarify what "GB" is used.

Seagate has always labeled their drives correctly. When you buy a 500 GB drive, you literally get at least 500 billion bytes. Microsoft labels it incorrectly saying 500 GB is 465 GB. That is an inequality unless you clarify 465 is actually GiB which makes it an equality.


Seagate has never been misleading, Microsoft was (still is). At bare minimum, Microsoft needs to put a "1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) notice on their hard drive properties page.


Metal platters as well as optical mediums and networking equipment aren't constrainted to bits like physical transistors are in a memory. That is, the data in a given segment may not always satisfy this equation:

bits % 8 = 0

This is why they use base 10 instead of base 2--base 2 is irrelevant to those applications and base 10 is the defacto numbering system world-wide.


SSDs and Flash memory sticks do have transistors like their other memory counterparts where base 2 is relevant. They should be labeled as GiB just like RAM and cache memory.



Drives can be formatted using multiple formating standards. The capcity for one type of format won't necessarily equal the size of another format. Raw size is a good, universal standard.

 

[HammerON]

Giga- means 1 billion (1,000,000,000) just as mega- means 1 million (1,000,000).
Gibi- means 2^30 (1,073,741,824) just as mebi- means 2^20 (1,048,576).

Prior to ~2002, giga- was used to describe gibi- (incorrectly). The -bi- prefix was introduced and standardized to make it known that gibi- is not equal to giga-. Microsoft has not adapted this but pretty much the rest of the industry has. If not outright adopting it, clarify what "GB" is used.

Seagate has always labeled their drives correctly. When you buy a 500 GB drive, you literally get at least 500 billion bytes. Microsoft labels it incorrectly saying 500 GB is 465 GB. That is an inequality unless you clarify 465 is actually GiB which makes it an equality.


Seagate has never been misleading, Microsoft was (still is). At bare minimum, Microsoft needs to put a "1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) notice on their hard drive properties page.


Metal platters as well as optical mediums and networking equipment aren't constrainted to bits like physical transistors are in a memory. That is, the data in a given segment may not always satisfy this equation:

bits % 8 = 0

This is why they use base 10 instead of base 2--base 2 is irrelevant to those applications and base 10 is the defacto numbering system world-wide.


SSDs and Flash memory sticks do have transistors like their other memory counterparts where base 2 is relevant. They should be labeled as GiB just like RAM and cache memory.



Drives can be formatted using multiple formating standards. The capcity for one type of format won't necessarily equal the size of another format. Raw size is a good, universal standard.

I learn something new every day!

 

[tkpenalty]

Getting a little dramatic are we? Genocide? Really? The fine is going to the EU's "budget". This is nothing more than a payday and has nothing to do with justice.

Note you guys are the ones who have loaned the most amount of money from overseas. You are merely repaying the EU for your loans.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

You mean Intel is paying illegitimate loans made by the USA government? I'd rather sentence the politicians to a lifetime of hard labor and give Intel their money back. Intel isn't at fault.


Oh right, Intel is being fined because AMD didn't move product. All the same I suppose.

 

[Wile E]

You mean Intel is paying illegitimate loans made by the USA government? I'd rather sentence the politicians to a lifetime of hard labor and give Intel their money back. Intel isn't at fault.


Oh right, Intel is being fined because AMD didn't move product. All the same I suppose.

And that's pretty much how I feel about it.

 

[tkpenalty]

You mean Intel is paying illegitimate loans made by the USA government? I'd rather sentence the politicians to a lifetime of hard labor and give Intel their money back. Intel isn't at fault.


Oh right, Intel is being fined because AMD didn't move product. All the same I suppose.

Use some logic.

Intel Gives money to OEMs not to sell AMD = According to Intel a "rebate".

However, rebate = money.

And money to do something anti-competetive = bribe.

Bribe = Illegal

It is very unfair, and illegal to prevent a secondary firm from even having any market exposure through under-the-table dealings, and especially if they use money to do so. Intel could have used price fixing if OEMs promised to exclusively sell Intel at the ratio , or a direct under-the-table bribe, but however, they used "Rebates", something that has a positive connotation.

In the end its still money moving from one firm to another for depriving a third party of any market exposure, and their profits.

Hence, illegal.

Get it? Read my post PROPERLY. I'd really slam the United State's legal system as a sham for not uprooting these schemes earlier. Freedom in the united states? my arse. Theres barely any freedom in the markets when the majority of people are conformists who protect the big and wealthy not realising what it means for themselves and those who are unfortunate.

Not saying that Intel is crap or deserves to die however, but this fine should go ahead regardless, AND they should really sack the perpretrators of this; their accountants, their marketing and distribution who are responsible.

Anyway many of you guys ALWAYS seem to take sides. When someone says intel is being such and such, theres always a stupid reply such as: "but AMD doesnt have enough supply". Well. If you have a company thats pretty much deprived of their profits, then they cant really have a flexible supply of goods, and anyway when that occured the world was in a boom, and a shortage of goods is normal.

And consider the bigger you grow, the more extra money to burn you have. AMD didnt have that luxury at all because, their nice and fast athlons which kicked the shit out of the Prescotts, didnt make their way into the market because manufacturers simply didnt accept them because of shady dealings; i.e. the nicely named bribes-"rebates".

Considering how Intel stopped these henious practises since the Core 2s raped, and still are raping AMD, its fairly obvious that Intel did that to save their asses as they entered into technical inferiority, and thus kept their market position.

Guys who think that Intel is innocent and that the EU are a bunch of money loving pricks who are just using this to save themselves. Read this over and over again. You'll see the irony in what you're saying.

And that's pretty much how I feel about it.

Mate. How hard is it to understand that its illegal when a manufacturer pays (or "rebates") a shop not to sell a competing manufactuers' products?

And you may be thinking "how the fuck is that illegal? stop whining", and its simple:

Primary sector-mining, agriculture <- Money <- Secondary - Manufacturers etc, may be many in between <- Money <- Tetiary - retail <---- Consumer --- where the money is supposed to come from. (Wages/Salaries profits compensate). You probably know this very well but you've probably forgotten about it.

For AMD they've essentially had part of that flow almost nullified, and it just means the company begins to shrink until a point, where they cant get any crappier. And we DEFINATELY saw that, despite their clear dominance during the Prescott days from a technological perspective. And the only reason how is from evidence. Intel's dealings. it HAS happened. Its a very simple anti-competetive trick and I believe that they're lucky they've been given a light slap on the wrist.

 

[Wile E]

I don't care how anyone tries to justify the fine. To me, what they did, while maybe not the most ethical, should not have been illegal. Not paying as much money for the product, is not the same as getting paid to buy the product, like you are insinuating.

How hard is to understand that I think the entire case is bullshit, and completely unjustified? It doesn't matter how many times you, or anyone else tries to explain it. When I think the entire thing is a farce to gain money out of a huge corporation, rehashing the same arguments over and over is not going to convince me. It will take new facts, not another interpretation of what's already been posted.

 

[tkpenalty]

I don't care how anyone tries to justify the fine. To me, what they did, while maybe not the most ethical, should not have been illegal. Not paying as much money for the product, is not the same as getting paid to buy the product, like you are insinuating.

How hard is to understand that I think the entire case is bullshit, and completely unjustified? It doesn't matter how many times you, or anyone else tries to explain it. When I think the entire thing is a farce to gain money out of a huge corporation, rehashing the same arguments over and over is not going to convince me. It will take new facts, not another interpretation of what's already been posted.

Its not hard when I see you as a very conservative person.

 

[tastegw]

when the p1-p4's were out, i knew nothing about AMD, i had never even heard of them.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Rebate = partial manufacturer refund

That is, the product is being sold at a value higher than the actual cost to bring it to you. For those that care, they can get some of that income back from the manufacturer. For some it is an incentive to buy and to others, it is like a gift from the manufacturer for taking your time to inform them who bought their product.

Bribe = money up front for a favor

e.g. paying a politician to see things your way


A bribe is not a rebate and a rebate is not a bribe. Bribes are illegal, rebates are not. Rebates artificially alter the price of a product. When an OEM buys extra products from one manufacturer, it naturally decreases the likelihood that said OEM will buy products from another manufacturer unless the original can't keep up with demand or costs too much. That's economics.

 

[Sugarush]

Rebate = partial manufacturer refund

That is, the product is being sold at a value higher than the actual cost to bring it to you. For those that care, they can get some of that income back from the manufacturer. For some it is an incentive to buy and to others, it is like a gift from the manufacturer for taking your time to inform them who bought their product.

Bribe = money up front for a favor

e.g. paying a politician to see things your way


A bribe is not a rebate and a rebate is not a bribe. Bribes are illegal, rebates are not. Rebates artificially alter the price of a product. When an OEM buys extra products from one manufacturer, it naturally decreases the likelihood that said OEM will buy products from another manufacturer unless the original can't keep up with demand or costs too much. That's economics.

"Certain rebates can lead to lower prices for consumers. However, where a company is in a dominant position on a market, rebates that are conditional on buying less of a rival's products, or not buying them at all, are abusive according to settled case-law of the Community Courts unless the dominant company can put forward specific reasons to justify their application in the individual case."

The rebates are OK, as such, but the conditions on which the were offered by the dominant supplier make them illegal.
The key factors here are: Intel's dominant position on the market and their conditions for the rebates.
The consumers didn't get the products they could have gotten, not because Intel simply outrun AMD in the price/performance factors, but because they artificially excluded AMD from the market.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

A rebate can't be illegal in one situation and legal in another. That is a double standard. It doesn't matter who is bigger than who, the end result is always the same (move product).

In dealing with semiconductors, the profit margins come down to manufacturing process. Intel has always been on equal or smaller process than AMD. From that statement, we know that price-wise, Intel has always been capable of selling their products for the same amount or less.

Again, AMD got spanked because AMD was/is being AMD (no ads, generally behind on processing power, poor decisions, slow to change process, etc.). Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the past two decades: selling great products at competitive prices (rebate or not--irrelevant).

If the majority of consumers actually cared if their computer had an Intel or AMD processor, Dell wouldn't have been offering only Intel processors for over two decades. I highly doubt rebates had anything to do with Dell's decision--it was market demand (or lack of).

 

[Sugarush]

A rebate can't be illegal in one situation and legal in another. That is a double standard. It doesn't matter who is bigger than who, the end result is always the same (move product).

In dealing with semiconductors, the profit margins come down to manufacturing process. Intel has always been on equal or smaller process than AMD. From that statement, we know that price-wise, Intel has always been capable of selling their products for the same amount or less.

Again, AMD got spanked because AMD was/is being AMD (no ads, generally behind on processing power, poor decisions, slow to change process, etc.). Intel was just doing what they have been doing for the past two decades: selling great products at competitive prices (rebate or not--irrelevant).

If the majority of consumers actually cared if their computer had an Intel or AMD processor, Dell wouldn't have been offering only Intel processors for over two decades. I highly doubt rebates had anything to do with Dell's decision--it was market demand (or lack of).

Rebates are supposed to be based on the sales of your own product (buy more, get it cheaper per piece / pay within 30 days get it cheaper etc), not on the sales of your competitors.

Intel was/is the dominant player, so by excluding AMD from the market, they were establishing a quasi monopoly for themselves.

So both, Intel's dominant market position and the exclusivity rebates were essential for this ruling.

If Intel were doing so great then why not compete fair by offering great products at competitive prices, why exclude the inferior AMD from the market?

You're right the majority of the people don't care whether it's an Intel ar AMD chip in their PC, but this majority didn't even get to see the AMD chips in pre built PCs because Intel effectively excluded AMD from the market. So the discussion about better marketing etc. becomes irrelevant altogether.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Automotive makers should be fined too. I mean I've gotten several "loyalty" rebates over the years. Why doesn't the EU go after BMW? I got 5,000 dollar rebate for buying a second BMW and not another brand. I only got that rebate because I bought another BMW. If I would have bought a Benz and skipped a purchase from BMW that rebate would have been lost the next time I bought a one (BMW). So yeah rebates do work based off of a competitors sale.

Also what about El Fiendo point about restaurants selling only Coke and not Pepsi. Or vise versa. SO many other industries do what Intel did its pathetic. I'm not going to argue whether Intel broke the law or not. All I'm saying is whats good for the goose is good for the gander. This is why I feel its a payday and not "justice".

 

[Sugarush]

Automotive makers should be fined too. I mean I've gotten several "loyalty" rebates over the years. Why doesn't the EU go after BMW? I got 5,000 dollar rebate for buying a second BMW and not another brand. I only got that rebate because I bought another BMW. If I would have bought a Benz and skipped a purchase from BMW that rebate would have been lost the next time I bought a one (BMW). So yeah rebates do work based off of a competitors sale.

Also what about El Fiendo point about restaurants selling only Coke and not Pepsi. Or vise versa. SO many other industries do what Intel did its pathetic. I'm not going to argue whether Intel broke the law or not. All I'm saying is whats good for the goose is good for the gander. This is why I feel its a payday and not "justice".

First of all there are a lot more car manufacturers than CPU manufacturers and none of them has a dominant market share.
Secondly it is you, the consumer, who has made the decision to go for BMW and not for ALL those other manufacturers among them Merc.

In case of Intel that choice was effectively taken from the consumers, if the average buyer went to the retailers he would get (almost) only a pre-built PC based on Intel CPU.

As for Coke vs Pepsi, it is not an issue of rebates, but rather explicit agreements between the soft drink producer and a particular restaurant (chain). And the producers compete for these agreements, the one offering better terms gets the exclusive deal.

In case of Intel vs AMD, AMD didn't get to compete with Intel, as the OEM/retailers could not refuse Intel's rebates, as they largely depended on Intel for the most of their supplies, and by doing so the were risking huge losses. Hence Intel practically dictated their terms and excluded AMD from the market.

 

[Meecrob]

Giga- means 1 billion (1,000,000,000) just as mega- means 1 million (1,000,000).
Gibi- means 2^30 (1,073,741,824) just as mebi- means 2^20 (1,048,576).

Prior to ~2002, giga- was used to describe gibi- (incorrectly). The -bi- prefix was introduced and standardized to make it known that gibi- is not equal to giga-. Microsoft has not adapted this but pretty much the rest of the industry has. If not outright adopting it, clarify what "GB" is used.

Seagate has always labeled their drives correctly. When you buy a 500 GB drive, you literally get at least 500 billion bytes. Microsoft labels it incorrectly saying 500 GB is 465 GB. That is an inequality unless you clarify 465 is actually GiB which makes it an equality.


Seagate has never been misleading, Microsoft was (still is). At bare minimum, Microsoft needs to put a "1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) notice on their hard drive properties page.


Metal platters as well as optical mediums and networking equipment aren't constrainted to bits like physical transistors are in a memory. That is, the data in a given segment may not always satisfy this equation:

bits % 8 = 0

This is why they use base 10 instead of base 2--base 2 is irrelevant to those applications and base 10 is the defacto numbering system world-wide.


SSDs and Flash memory sticks do have transistors like their other memory counterparts where base 2 is relevant. They should be labeled as GiB just like RAM and cache memory.



Drives can be formatted using multiple formating standards. The capcity for one type of format won't necessarily equal the size of another format. Raw size is a good, universal standard.

in the computer industry they ALL started out labeling drives as 1024k=1MB, even seagate, if you need some proof i can probably dig up a 650mb Seagate or the like at home and show you, it was when all the top makers started to shift over to the 1billion bytes bullshit that the consumer started getting screwed, google about it, there are articles apon articles
about it, drive makers YES ALL OF THEM use to use BINARY LABLES, there was no such thing as a mibibyte or gibibyte, those are NEW TERMS made up to allow the hdd makers to get away with what effectively is false advertising.

the fact is that MS is following JEDEC specs for memory capacity ratings, read the link i sent, it explains how the hdd industry is pushing the term gibibyte(and the other like terms) its pretty clear if you have been in computers as long as I have been(since the early 90's) that HDD makers made the change then when it became an issue they desided to change the definition of the words used in order to avoid lawsuits and looking like the bastards they really are.

Kilobyte
megabyte
gigabyte
terabyte
petabyte

all of these are terms only used in computerized technology and have a set meaning form when computers got their start, changing the meaning now to allow your industry to effectively screw people by making noobs think 500GB=500gb when it really is 465gb once formated.

even seagate didnt use to use binary, they changed over around the time most hdd makers started changing over, it was when GB drives where still pretty young, when i get back (gotta do some running around) I may have to lookup articals about it for you that explain when and why all this stuff started and why the NEW TERMS gibi/mibi/kibi and now even tibi came into excistance, because these are not terms that excisted back when computers where young :/

 

[a_ump]

i didn't even know about gibi/mibi/kibi, etc. sounds like horseshit terms never to be used for a proper reason , interested to see what you find

 

[FordGT90Concept]

If Intel were doing so great then why not compete fair by offering great products at competitive prices, why exclude the inferior AMD from the market?

They were competitive prices becuase Intel and AMD are both still around. If Intel undercut AMD, Intel's bottome line would take a hit because they wouldn't be making money on processors sold and AMD would be out of business because they would run out of revenue. Cost over value prevents what you are suggesting from ever happening (at least for long).

First of all there are a lot more car manufacturers than CPU manufacturers and none of them has a dominant market share.

Toyota is dominating now. Ford/GM were dominating a few years ago (before the economic collapse).

In case of Intel that choice was effectively taken from the consumers, if the average buyer went to the retailers he would get (almost) only a pre-built PC based on Intel CPU.

As I said, that claim is false. Only Dell didn't offer AMD and they said it was because consumers didn't demand AMD products.


AMD is where they are because they are being AMD. Remember, for over a decade, all AMD did was reverse engineer Intel processors. AMD has never had the geniuses required to design, manufacturer, and sell a great product. They got close once and got put back in their place. That is the story of AMD. You can't blame Intel for AMD constantly dropping the ball.

in the computer industry they ALL started out labeling drives as 1024k=1MB, even seagate, if you need some proof i can probably dig up a 650mb Seagate or the like at home and show you

The oldest hard drive I have at hand is a Western Digital Caviar 12500. Stated capacity is 2559.8 MB.

Stats
4960 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 512 bytes per sector

Multiply that you get: 2559836160 bytes

divide by 1,000,000 to convert from bytes to megabytes and you get: 2559.8 MB

The exact same number on the drive. That drive is from somewhere between 1993 and 1997. The lawsuit was in 2005-2006.


Go ahead, dig it up. It wasn't relevant to the lawsuit but still would be intesting to see if HDDs ever used MiB or GiB instead of MB or GB.

all of these are terms only used in computerized technology and have a set meaning form when computers got their start, changing the meaning now to allow your industry to effectively screw people by making noobs think 500GB=500gb when it really is 465gb once formated.

False. 500 GB = 465 GiB. Here's a picture:

285,470,289,920 bytes / 1,073,741,824 = 265.864925384521484375 GiB
214,626,701,312 bytes / 1,073,741,824 = 199.886692047119140625 GiB
500,096,991,232 bytes / 1,073,741,824 = 465.751617431640625 GiB

285,470,289,920 bytes / 1,000,000,000 = 285.470289920 GB
214,626,701,312 bytes / 1,000,000,000 = 214.626701312 GB
500,096,991,232 bytes / 1,000,000,000 = 500.096991232 GB

Microsoft calculates GB wrong. They are calculating GiB and labeling GB.

The difference formatted/unformated is about 8 MiB used for NTFS. The capacity of the drive doesn't change.

 

[Meecrob]

your wrong, theres no such thing as a GiB, its a NEW TERM made up by the HDD manufacturers to avoid being sued over false advertising, JEDEC specs and even IEEE specs defined a Gigabyte as 1024megabytes and a megabyte as 1024kelobytes and a kelobyte as 1,024bytes, IEEE only started backing the kibi/mibi/gibi/tibi/pibi prefixes years after the HDD manufactures came up with them as a way to avoid being sued into oblivion for selling drives at false capacitys.

and I have a 650MB drive thats 650mb FORMATED, its a seagate mind you, drives in the GB range are where they slowly stated converting over to decimal, and then it was only so that they could sell a drive that was really far smaller as if it was larger, eventually somebody got sick of it and sued.

I know this is all b4 your time, but I also have a 2mb hdd, 5mb hdd, 15mb hdd, an a massive 20mb hdd, all format out very close to their stated capacitys, loose a little space to the file system but not much.

this site explains it better then I have

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/binary_v_decimal_measurement.htm

One of the more difficult problems you will face when working with computer hardware, especially hard drives, is the two different measurement definitions or terms used to calculate drive capacity. Capacity measurements are usually expressed in kilobytes (thousands of bytes), in megabytes (millions of bytes), or gigabytes (billions of bytes), however, due to a mathematical coincidence there are two different meanings for each of these measures.

Computers are digital, and with that store data using binary numbers, or powers of two, although we are accustomed to using decimal numbers, expressed as powers of ten. As it turns out, two to the tenth power, 2^10, is 1,024, which is very close in value to 1,000 (10^3). Similarly, 2^20 is 1,048,576, which is approximately 1,000,000 (10^6), and 2^30 is 1,073,741,824, close to 1,000,000,000 (10^9). As computer development became more prominent and binary numbers began to be used on a regular basis, computer scientists took note of this similarity and began using the abbreviations normally associated with decimal numbers, and applied them to binary numbers. This led to 2^10 being given the prefix "kilo", 2^20 given the prefix "mega", and 2^30 referred to as "giga".

This shorthand reference works well when used between technicians who regularly work in computer development, as they know what they are referring to, (and no one else really cares). However, when computers entered the mainstream, the dual reference began leading to quite a bit of confusion and inconsistency. In many areas of development, only binary values are used. As an example, 64 MB of RAM memory always means 64 times 1,048,576 bytes, never 64,000,000. Lending confusion to this mess though, in some areas only decimal values are used such as when the term, "56K modem" works at a maximum speed of 56,000 bits per second, not 57,344.

It's no secret that storage devices are the single largest area of confusion in this regard, as some drive manufacturers use the decimal method, while others use the binary method when advertising their drive capacities. Even some software companies play this game, with some software packages using binary megabytes and gigabytes, and others using decimal megabytes and gigabytes. If you are using smaller numbers, the difference between decimal and binary is rather insignificant, but as the numbers grow larger so does the disparity. As an example, there is only a 2.4% difference between a decimal and a binary kilobyte, but when you calculate a megabyte, this difference increases to approximately 5%. A gigabyte produces a difference of approximately 7.5%, which is a rather significant difference. Not too many years ago this difference, as it pertains to hard drives that is, wasn't all that noticeable when drive manufacturers advertised the size of their drives in decimal format, and you partitioned and formatted your drive in binary. Today, however, people are beginning to notice the difference between the two measures. As an example, should you purchase an "80 GB" hard drive, in all probability it will partition and format to about 74.2 to 76.3 gigabytes. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with the drive, it's just that the manufacturer stated the 80 GB in decimal format, but Windows (MS-DOS) partitioned and formatted the disk in binary gigabytes. There are a few other issues with large hard drive capacities, but we'll address those in the drive limitations and barriers section of this topic area.

Another issue of importance is that of converting between binary gigabytes and binary megabytes. Decimal gigabytes and megabytes differ by a factor of 1,000, however binary measurement differs by 1,024. So the same 80 GB hard disk is 80,000 MB in decimal terms, however the 76.3 binary gigabytes are equal to 78,131 binary megabytes (76.3 times 1,024).......

there is more there, but that explains the fact that in COMPUTERS the "binary bytes" was never used till HDD makers invented it and got the IEEE to try and back them.

why cant HDD makers follow JEDEC specs and even the orignal IEEE specs of 1024 being a unit rather then 1000?

only one reasion they would do that, because 500 looks better then 465(7-7.5% diff)

These companies suck, to bad even hitchi started using decimal :/

so when is ram going to start being rated in MiB? seems its rated in MB and 1024k=1MB and 1024MB=1GB in ram.......want a screenshot?