I have a Sony S computer that I bought back in May and started using this month. It has some issues but generally it’s good – but by far no match to the Sony Z that I had (too bad they stopped making that brand – I just wish they revive it one day). I remember when I bought it it clearly said that it had 500 GB of Hard Disk capacity. To be fair, all the manufacturers, for mysterious reasons, claim that 1 GB = 1 billion bytes, while technically 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 Bytes (there is a difference of about 70 MB here), so, when they say 500 GB, what you really get is 465.66 GB (which is 35 GB less than what you thought you’re getting). I have no idea who came up with this really stupid marketing scheme, but I’m quite sure that the first real PC that I bought (which was a Gateway P5-133) had 2 GB of HDD on the box and it really had 2 GB.

In any case, when I checked how much Hard Disk capacity on this Vaio S, it said 441 GB, 24 GB less than what I should be getting. I gave Sony the benefit of the doubt and I did all the possible calculations that I can think of – I even thought it might be that Windows “hides” a few GBs here and there, but 24 GB is just too big a number.

I looked at my old Vaio F that claimed to have 240 GB, and it actually showed 223 GB, which is exactly the HDD capacity I should be getting, which means that computer manufacturers think that they now have leeway to lie to the consumer about the real capacity they are offering, since that consumer swallowed the 1 GB = 1 billion bytes thingie several years ago. It might also be that the calculators they’re using to calculate the number of bytes / GB are broken (stay clear of these Sony calculators, if they’re still selling any).

Nobody likes to be cheated on, but with very loose regulation from governments, and with very few people who really care, who’s going to notice a few lost GB here and there?

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