I was going through my 'My Documents' folder... I have a ton of stuff in there that goes back a few years.  Here's something I found that I thought would be useful as a reference for anyone who isn't sure about this stuff... this is from 2003 when these 2 guys were online almost 24/7 and I knew very little about computer stuff and was building my first computer.  I think this is all fairly accurate - they probably copied and pasted most of it to me.  An 80GB IDE HD was considered pretty big at that time btw :)


[03:42:58] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte 
[03:43:00] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte 
[03:43:01] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte 
[03:43:04] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte 
[03:43:06] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte 
[03:43:08] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte - In 2000, 3 exabytes of information was created 
[03:43:10] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte 
[03:43:12] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Zettabyte = 1 Zottabyte 
[03:43:14] &lt;tjt2003&gt; 1000 Zottabyte = 1 Brontobyte - that is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes

[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Value Abbreviation Size 
[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; bit b 0 or 1 
[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; byte B 8 bits 
[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; kilobit kb 1000 bits 
[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; kilobyte (binary) KB 1024 bytes 
[03:52:35] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; kilobyte (decimal) KB 1000 bytes 
[03:52:37] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Megabit Mb 1000 kilobits 
[03:52:39] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Megabyte (binary) MB 1024 Kilobytes 
[03:52:42] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Megabyte (decimal) MB 1000 Kilobytes 
[03:52:43] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Gigabit Gb 1000 Megabits 
[03:52:45] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Gigabyte (binary) GB 1024 Megabytes 
[03:52:47] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Gigabyte (decimal) GB 1000 Megabytes 

[03:55:17] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Definitions:
[03:55:17] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; kilo (k)* = 10 ^ 3 = 1,000 thousand
[03:55:17] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; mega (M) = 10 ^ 6 = 1,000,000 million
[03:55:17] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; giga (G) = 10 ^ 9 = 1,000,000,000 billion
[03:55:17] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; tera (T) = 10 ^ 12 = 1,000,000,000,000 trillion
[03:56:18] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; * Note that according to the Metric system, the &quot;k&quot; or &quot;kilo&quot; prefix is always lowercase.
[03:56:57] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; The binary forms of kilobytes and megabytes have become standard throughout the computer industry, although they are incorrect uses of the SI prefixes (in the IT field lowercase &quot;k&quot; is used to describe decimal kilobits, and capital &quot;K&quot; is used for binary kilobytes).
[03:57:41] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; When used to describe Data Transfer Rate, bits/bytes are calculated as in the metric system
[03:59:07] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; In data communications, a kilobit is a thousand bits, or 1,000 bits. It is normally used for measuring the amount of data that is transferred in a second between two telecommunication points.
[03:59:56] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Kilobits per second is usually shortened to kbps or Kbps**. Some sources define a kilobit to mean 1,024 bits. Although the bit is a unit of the binary number system, bits in data communications are discrete signal pulses and have historically been counted using the decimal number system. For example, 28.8 kilobits per second (kbps) is 28,800 bits per second
[04:02:24] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; When used as a measurement of network data transfers, or throughput, always assume the word is bits first.
[04:02:24] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; When used to describe Memory Size, or Data Storage bits/bytes are generally calculated in binary mode and expressed as some exponent of 2.
[04:04:07] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; 1 byte (B) = 8 bits (b)
[04:04:08] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; 1 Kilobyte (K / KB) = 2^10 bytes = 1,024 bytes
[04:04:08] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; 1 Megabyte (M / MB) = 2^20 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes
[04:04:08] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; 1 Gigabyte (G / GB) = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes
[04:04:08] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; 1 Terabyte (T / TB) = 2^40 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
[04:05:16] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; Although data storage capacity, such as on hard drives is generally expressed in binary Megabytes (2^20), most Hard disk manufacturers, and some newer BIOSes use decimal megabytes (10^6), which is slightly different and it gets confusing...
[04:05:53] &lt;Dr_Z&gt; so, hence the Arguments and people Sueing