Seagate lawsuit concludes, settlement announced - bit-tech.net Forums

CardJoe · 26th Oct 2007, 12:40

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10...nt_announced/1

The Seagate lawsuit about advertised space vs. actual space is in the final stages and customers are offered two choices: cash or free software.

MiNiMaL_FuSS · 26th Oct 2007, 12:49

Is this avalible to people in the UK? Because I've got a couple of new segate drives and wouldn't say no to 5% back for no reason other than the stupidity of some whiney americans.

quack · 26th Oct 2007, 12:52

Will we now be going out and buying 465GB drives instead of 500GB?

Mankz · 26th Oct 2007, 13:01

Grrr... Why must it be US only...

Lord_A · 26th Oct 2007, 13:06

Retarded, Seagate should sue them back for being such stupid moronic crap for brains.

chrisuk · 26th Oct 2007, 13:28

A gigabyte should be (and is, technically speaking) 1024^3 so this is a good ruling - the use of 1000^3 is a misrepresentation of the truth.

Delphium · 26th Oct 2007, 13:44

Ughhh, this has been known for years!!! Dam morons, Seagate should have used that money to educate those morons, not encourage them, pfft.

mclean007 · 26th Oct 2007, 13:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisuk

A gigabyte should be (and is, technically speaking) 1024^3 so this is a good ruling - the use of 1000^3 is a misrepresentation of the truth.

No. Giga- is the SI prefix for 10^9, so I would say it is fair to say a GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. There is an argument that GB in popular usage means 2^40 bytes, following the logic that 1kB is almost exclusively considered to be 2^10 (1024) and so on. Each has its merits and I don't think either argument can be comprehensively rebutted.

The binary prefixes (kibi/ki=2^10, mebi/Mi=2^20, gibi/Gi=2^30, tebi/Ti=2^40) were meant to resolve the ambiguity, but haven't really been widely adopted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

Given HDD manufacturers have AFAIK always used decimal prefixes, surely that is established market practice. It is no less correct to say 1GB=10^9 bytes than to say 1GB=2^30 bytes, so I think Seagate have come off quite badly out of this case. That said, how much will it _actually_ cost them in cash rebates? How many people will actually go to the bother of digging out the receipt (assuming they still have it) for their $100 HDD and posting it to Seagate for the sake of a 5% rebate? Not many I'll bet. Bear in mind the "$40" software actually costs them nothing but bandwidth (if, as I assume, it is downloadable) or packaging (if physical media).

sotu1 · 26th Oct 2007, 14:27

would hear if this ever affects UK users (and the rest of the world for that matter) the few GBs certainly do make a difference, and it irritates me when they aren't accurate.

should affect other manufacturers surely...maybe seagate could pay a member of the public to sue samsung, toshiba, et al....

Shadow_101 · 26th Oct 2007, 14:58

Dam Americans. This attitude ****es me off.

pendragon · 26th Oct 2007, 15:10

i always found the difference in advertised space vs. useable space under FAT to be annoying, so I'm okay with this ruling, however I can understand people thinking it's retarded. In the end, hopefully manufacturers and software developers will all adopt the same standard.

E.E.L. Ambiense · 26th Oct 2007, 15:22

Well, being one of those "dam stupid whiny Americans", I can say I don't agree with this ruling. People, regardless of locale, should understand the concept of overhead when it comes to HDD's. 500GB looks better than 465GB on a box anyways

.

cyrilthefish · 26th Oct 2007, 15:42

This is a VERY good thing and should have happened from day one really with all drives and flash memory.

Gah, just thinking of the amount of time over the years i must have spent trying to explain to less technically minded people why the device they just bought does not have the space it was advertised as having, makes me annoyed

People generally can understand why the filesystem uses up space (i tended to explain it as think of a warehouse, but with a small section of it used to note down the name and location of everything in said warehouse)
But explaining the 1024mb vs 1000mb difference just leaves people thinking they've been cheated out of space.

*looks at his 1GB SD card that has 982mb capacity*

imagine if the RAM manufacturers did the same thing, there'd be all kinds of oddly-sized memory amounts in people's PCs

Firehed · 26th Oct 2007, 16:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by E.E.L. Ambiense

Well, being one of those "dam stupid whiny Americans", I can say I don't agree with this ruling. People, regardless of locale, should understand the concept of overhead when it comes to HDD's. 500GB looks better than 465GB on a box anyways

.

It's not an overhead issue. They're using a technical error in order to effectively falsely advertise legally - it's not a matter of the OS using that extra 24 bytes per kibibyte as the FAT (or new-age equivalent). Yes, it's the fault of the OS for using one unit and labeling it another, but that doesn't stop a difference approaching 10% as we hit terabyte drives. Manufacturers could use this as a marketing tool, selling all of their TrueSpace(tm) 1TB drives at a premium, and people get a drive that actually reports as having a terabyte in their OS. In actuality, they're selling you a 1TiB drive which would be about 1.1TB, so big deal. It wouldn't kill them to do it "right".

Brett89 · 26th Oct 2007, 17:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by E.E.L. Ambiense

Well, being one of those "dam stupid whiny Americans", I can say I don't agree with this ruling.

I'm one too, and I think this lawsuit is like the article said, a load of bologna. This is just another dumb lawsuit by someone looking to get rich quick. Sadly, Seagate had to take the brunt of it.

E.E.L. Ambiense · 26th Oct 2007, 17:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firehed

It's not an overhead issue. They're using a technical error in order to effectively falsely advertise legally - it's not a matter of the OS using that extra 24 bytes per kibibyte as the FAT (or new-age equivalent). Yes, it's the fault of the OS for using one unit and labeling it another, but that doesn't stop a difference approaching 10% as we hit terabyte drives. Manufacturers could use this as a marketing tool, selling all of their TrueSpace(tm) 1TB drives at a premium, and people get a drive that actually reports as having a terabyte in their OS. In actuality, they're selling you a 1TiB drive which would be about 1.1TB, so big deal. It wouldn't kill them to do it "right".

Sure.. I see both sides of the argument. I guess I just don't sweat the small stuff like that. An HDD is just that; an HDD. I use it till it goes poof, then get another. I can see why people would get upset that they aren't getting what is on the box; at least in its entirety. I dunno. Personally, I always compensate for what I need when buying drives, and always shoot higher than what I'm targeting to make up for that 'deviance' in space versus advertised space.

DarkLord7854 · 26th Oct 2007, 17:19

Meh.. the offer isn't anything great.. 5%.. woo.. that's what.. 5$? Prolly costs more to have the check written to you and sent

noobarino · 26th Oct 2007, 18:19

poeple will do anything to sue somebody these days. morons.

HellRazor · 26th Oct 2007, 19:15

lawsuits like this piss me off....
Its been known for a long time that this is what you get when you formatt a hard drive. I'm a huge fan of Seagate, and only purchase their drives, so I would be "entitled" to pretty decent chunk of change from this lawsuit as I've purchase many, many drives in that time frame. However I will be punish Seagate for ignorance of retarded consumer and a messed up court system.

I'm standing by Seagate!

C-Sniper · 26th Oct 2007, 19:31

Welcome to America... home of the Sue happy lawyers and legal system.

26th Oct 2007, 12:40	#1
CardJoe Player Character bit-tech Staff Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 7,940	Seagate lawsuit concludes, settlement announced http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10...nt_announced/1 The Seagate lawsuit about advertised space vs. actual space is in the final stages and customers are offered two choices: cash or free software. __________________ this is joe's non-bit-tech blog

26th Oct 2007, 12:49	#2
MiNiMaL_FuSS I Mod, Therefore I Own Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Posts: 3,067	Is this avalible to people in the UK? Because I've got a couple of new segate drives and wouldn't say no to 5% back for no reason other than the stupidity of some whiney americans. __________________ -Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, Take the Present as a Gift-

26th Oct 2007, 12:52	#3
quack \o/ Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: England Posts: 5,220	Will we now be going out and buying 465GB drives instead of 500GB? __________________ Denying Rights to Music lovers. Denying Rights to Movie lovers.

26th Oct 2007, 13:06	#5
Lord_A Boom baby! Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Leicester, UK Posts: 3,467	Retarded, Seagate should sue them back for being such stupid moronic crap for brains. __________________ God is a trap. God is the answer when we don't know the answer. That means, when your brain is not enough big, when you don't understand, you go, "Ah, it's God, it's God." - Philippe Starck nothing to see here, move along...

26th Oct 2007, 13:44	#7
Delphium You there computer man fix my pants Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: on teh interwebz Posts: 1,254	Ughhh, this has been known for years!!! Dam morons, Seagate should have used that money to educate those morons, not encourage them, pfft. __________________ \| Asus P5N32-E SLI \| Q6600 G0 @3.0ghz Watercooled \| 8GB Corsair Dominator PC8500 @1066mhz 5-5-5-15 2T \| XFX GTX285 \| BFG 8800GTS \| XFX 9600GT \| 1x 128GB Crucial M225 SSD \| 5x 500GB Seagate SATA-II \| BFG 800W SLI PSU \| Creative X-Fi Music \| Logitech Z-5500 5.1ch speakers \| 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) \| 1x Panasonic 42"Plasma \| All working on Win7 Ultimate x64 \|

26th Oct 2007, 13:28	#6
chrisuk Modder Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Maidstone, Kent, UK Posts: 57	A gigabyte should be (and is, technically speaking) 1024^3 so this is a good ruling - the use of 1000^3 is a misrepresentation of the truth.

26th Oct 2007, 14:27	#9
sotu1 Mini Love Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England, South of. Posts: 1,167	would hear if this ever affects UK users (and the rest of the world for that matter) the few GBs certainly do make a difference, and it irritates me when they aren't accurate. should affect other manufacturers surely...maybe seagate could pay a member of the public to sue samsung, toshiba, et al....

26th Oct 2007, 14:58	#10
Shadow_101 Mudkips. Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Harborne, Birmingham Posts: 1,090	Dam Americans. This attitude ****es me off. __________________ Network Engineering & Security, CCNA, ITIL (F). GM IT Security Analyst

26th Oct 2007, 15:10	#11
pendragon I pickle they Join Date: May 2004 Location: Massachusetts,usa Posts: 629	i always found the difference in advertised space vs. useable space under FAT to be annoying, so I'm okay with this ruling, however I can understand people thinking it's retarded. In the end, hopefully manufacturers and software developers will all adopt the same standard. __________________ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-@ s-:>: a- C++$ UL---@ P++>+++++$ L+ E----@ W+++ N o? K? w++>+++++ O---@ M-- V? PS--() PE+@ Y? PGP-@ t+(+++) 5(+)@ X@ R+(++) tv@ b++ DI@ D++ G e++>+++++ h! r(%) y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

26th Oct 2007, 15:22	#12
E.E.L. Ambiense Acrylic Heretic Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Malabar, FL Posts: 2,721	Well, being one of those "dam stupid whiny Americans", I can say I don't agree with this ruling. People, regardless of locale, should understand the concept of overhead when it comes to HDD's. 500GB looks better than 465GB on a box anyways . __________________ Latest Builds: "Movie Sign!" • CheckMate - MotM May '09 ~~Nominee~~ Loser! • BluBawx I • Lumière Noire - MotM Apr. '08 ~~Nominee~~ Loser! • Razzle Dazzle • CMC Field Server • "Building Better Worlds" - MotM Feb. '08 ~~Nominee~~ Loser! • Biohazard • MicroSuperFly

26th Oct 2007, 15:42	#13
cyrilthefish Hypermodder Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Posts: 833	This is a VERY good thing and should have happened from day one really with all drives and flash memory. Gah, just thinking of the amount of time over the years i must have spent trying to explain to less technically minded people why the device they just bought does not have the space it was advertised as having, makes me annoyed People generally can understand why the filesystem uses up space (i tended to explain it as think of a warehouse, but with a small section of it used to note down the name and location of everything in said warehouse) But explaining the 1024mb vs 1000mb difference just leaves people thinking they've been cheated out of space. looks at his 1GB SD card that has 982mb capacity imagine if the RAM manufacturers did the same thing, there'd be all kinds of oddly-sized memory amounts in people's PCs __________________ AMD Phenom x3 720 @ 3.4Ghz \| Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H \| 4GB DDR3 \| ATI 4890 1GB\| 1TB Samsung F1 \| 64GB Corsair P64 SSD

26th Oct 2007, 17:19	#17
DarkLord7854 Web Developer Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: West Palm Beach, Florida Posts: 3,822	Meh.. the offer isn't anything great.. 5%.. woo.. that's what.. 5$? Prolly costs more to have the check written to you and sent __________________ Current Computer: eVGA 780i Motherboard \| Q6600 Core2Quad \| eVGA GTX260 896Mbs 216-core \| 2x Seagate 500Gbs \| 8Gbs OCZ Platinum DDR2 800 \| Creative XtremeGamer X-Fi \| Thermaltake Armor Case Custom WordPress, ZenCart, Joomla, vBulletin, etc installs and skinning, PM/E-Mail for a quote

26th Oct 2007, 18:19	#18
noobarino Minimodder Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 33	poeple will do anything to sue somebody these days. morons.

26th Oct 2007, 19:15	#19
HellRazor Multimodder Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Colorado, USA Posts: 108	lawsuits like this piss me off.... Its been known for a long time that this is what you get when you formatt a hard drive. I'm a huge fan of Seagate, and only purchase their drives, so I would be "entitled" to pretty decent chunk of change from this lawsuit as I've purchase many, many drives in that time frame. However I will be punish Seagate for ignorance of retarded consumer and a messed up court system. I'm standing by Seagate! __________________ "If the women don't find you handsome, they should atleast find you handy" - Red Green Show