Why does 19.91 KB equal 20391 bytes?

[Blue-Jay]

I just looked at the "properties" of my newly tiny little sig pic.

[Salviati]

1. Because 1kb = 1024 bytes

because 1024 = 2^10, and everything that has to do with computers has to do with binary... and they used the metric prefix K, because 1024 is about 1000

[SeanQuinn]

2. Bingo.

He got it, way to go Salviati.

[Blue-Jay]

4. Too bad that formula doesn't work at the bank.

I'd convert to kilo-dollars.

[shoelace414]

3. this is kinda cool..

if you know computers you've seen many of these numbers before.. it's 2 doubled.. doubled doubled.. etc..

2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768 (don't forget the sign)
65536 (Don't forget the sign)

[Goldom]

5. right,

like when you've got the colors set to 32-bit, that means you're seeing 4,294,967,296 colors.

To think 256 used to be enough.

[Deja Q]

6. Because, for once, Microsoft is accurate. Pity the drive makers aren't.

Drive makers do the 1kb = 1000 bytes trick.

Therefore that juicy "300GB hard drive" they claim is closer to 290GB, and that is BEFORE formatting to your OS's specifications!