why kbyte=2^10 ??

[transgalactic]

a byte=2^8

kilo=1000

2^8 * 1000 differs 2^10

??

[rcgldr]

Someone decided that for binary based computer usage, it would be better to state everything values close to powers of 2. Since 2^10 is 1024, and close to 1000, it became "kilo". Similarly 2^20 is "mega", 2^30 is "giga", and 2^40 is "tera".

[transgalactic]

ok 1024 combinations is kbit
not

kbyte

[jtbell]

The International Electrotechnical Commission has tried to resolve this confusion by defining a new set of binary-based prefixes, e.g. 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes.

See this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte) for more details.

Personally, I think "kibibyte" sounds like a brand of dog food. :rolleyes:

[CRGreathouse]

The International Electrotechnical Commission has tried to resolve this confusion by defining a new set of binary-based prefixes

which have been almost universally ignored.