In case you haven't noticed (fat chance), the computer biz is
filled with words that start with "kilo" and "mega", and abbreviations like "K"
and "M" and "G". These words and abbreviations don't represent "things". Rather,
they represent numbers. Kind of like the old gangster movies where a bad guy
would say fifty g's rather than fifty thousand dollars. Computer
nerds use a different slang for numbers. But the idea is the same.
Let's start with just the numbers -- the K and M and G part.
We'll talk about the "B" and "Hz" and stuff in a moment. Table 1 shows what the
abbreviations mean, how they're often spoken, the approximate number each
represents, and the way-too-trivial-a-difference-to-worry-about actual number
each represents.
| Abbreviation |
Stands for |
Spoken as |
Approximate # |
Actual # |
| K |
Kilo |
kay or killa |
1,000 (a thousand) |
1,024 |
| M |
Mega |
meg |
1,000,000 (a million) |
1,048,576 |
| G |
Giga |
gig or giga |
1,000,000,000 (a billion) |
1,073,741,824 |
Table 1
If you ignore the boring "actual"
numbers, you'll see there's a simple pattern to it. Each time you go to from
K to M to G, you stick another ,000 onto the end of the preceding number
(also known as multiplying the previous number by a thousand), as you can
see below:
-
1,000
K (kilo)
-
1,000,000
M (mega)
-
1,000,000,000
G (giga)
So "K" means "thousand" or ",000", and "M" means "million"
or ",000,000" and G means "billion" or ",000,000,000". Though maybe I should
just shut up now before I make it sound more complicated than it is. Suffice
it to say if you're gonna buy a used car, and it has 80K miles on it, then
that means the car has 80,000 miles on it. If the car has 20M or 20G miles
on it, don't buy it.
Tip: Just in case
you're some kinda math brain who's wondering where the actual numbers come from,
K=210, M=220, G=230. (Yawn)
B is for Byte
Information in your head doesn't have any particular "size" to
it. Just because Albert Einstein was a genius doesn't mean his head was the size
of hot-air balloon or the Good Year blimp. His head was probably about the same
size as anyone else's, give or take a couple inches. That's because the human
brain stores information in some really weird abstract way that nobody
understands.
Computers have no brains, and really don't store
"information" the way a human brain does. In fact, computers don't really
store "information" per se. Except in the sense that a book stores
information -- as letters, numbers, pictures, and words. The information in
a book has no meaning to the book. Likewise, the information in a computer has no
"meaning" to the computer. Books and computers are a lot alike in that way
-- they both can be used to store text, numbers and pictures. And they're also
alike in that the text, pictures, and numbers inside have no "meaning" to
either the book or the computer.
Anyway, the point is it takes a certain amount of "space" to
store information outside of our brains. That's because the information
needs to be stored as words, numbers, pictures, or something that takes up
space. In a computer, the basic "unit" of measure is a byte, which is
the amount of space it takes to store one character, like the letter "A" or
an exclamation point (!). So it takes exactly three bytes to store the word
"cat". It takes about 2,000 bytes to store one double-spaced page
of typed text.
When you see an uppercase letter "B", that stands for
"byte". So instead of saying it takes "three bytes" to to store the word
"cat", I could have said it takes about 3B to store the word "cat".
Likewise, I could have said it takes about 2,000B to store the a typed page
of text. So now, given all you know about K and M and G, I bet you can
figure out what KB. MB, and GB mean before you even peek at Table 2.
| Abbreviation |
Stands for |
Approximate # |
(or) |
Actual # |
| KB |
Kilobyte |
1,000 bytes |
A thousand bytes |
1,024 bytes |
| MB |
Megabyte |
1,000,000 bytes |
A million bytes |
1,048,576 bytes |
| GB |
Gigabyte |
1,000,000,000 bytes |
A billion bytes |
1,073,741,824 bytes |
Table 2
So before, when I was talking about a typed, double-spaced
page of text taking up about "two thousand bytes" or "2,000B", I could have
said it take about 2 KB to store that page of text. Often, the "B" is
assumed, so it would be just as accurate for me to say it takes about
2 K
to store that page.
If you already have files stored on your computer, and know
how to get around in folders, you can see that every file has a size. You'll
need to use the Details view (choose View > Details from the menu bar above
the icons). Figure 1 shows an example where you can see the sizes of some
pictures in a folder on my computer.
Figure 1
The first file in in Figure 1 has a size of 735 KB, (or
roughly 735,000 bytes). The biggest file in that folder is 1,732 KB. That
could actually be expressed as 1.7MB (because a megabyte is about 1,000
kilobytes). But Windows always shows the file sizes in kilobytes (KB) just
to keep all the numbers on the same scale.
Of course, not all information in a computer is typed text.
A computer can also store pictures, sound, and video. We generally refer to
pictures, sound, and video as multimedia or media files. But
like typed text, those files have sizes too. Table 3 provides some examples
of multimedia files.
| Example |
Size |
Or about... |
| The picture shown in Figure 1 |
61 KB |
61,000 bytes |
| This entire Web page you're reading |
125 KB |
125,000 bytes |
| A 3-minute CD-quality song |
3.5 MB |
3,500 KB or 3,500,000 bytes |
| 1 minute of DVD-quality video with sound |
11 MB |
11,000 KB or 11,000,000 bytes |
Table 3
Exactly how much "stuff" you can get on a disk depends on
the
capacity of the disk. This is no different from the capacity of a
container for water (e.g. cup, bucket, bathtub). But of course, we don't use
"pint", "quart", "gallon" and such for describing disk capacities. We use
(what else?), KB, MB, and GB.
There are lots of different "types" of disks out there.
You've probably already heard of most of them -- floppy disks, CDs, DVDs,
and of course the hard disk that lives inside every computer. Hard disks
come in many different sizes., usually in the range of 20GB to 120GB. Table
4 lists the storage capacities of common types of disks. The column on the
right describes the capacity in relation to the capacity of a floppy disk,
just to give you some perspective on how greatly these capacities vary.
| Disk type |
Capacity |
Equals this many floppy disks |
| Floppy disk |
1.4 MB |
1 |
| CD |
700 MB |
700 |
| DVD |
4.7 GB |
4,700 |
| Hard disk |
20 GB to 120 GB |
20,000 to 120,000 |
Table 4
Tip: To see the storage capacity
of your own computer's hard drive, and how much of that space is still
available for storing more files,
click here.
bps is for "bits per second"
The letters bps are short for bits per second.
A byte (described earlier) is actually 8 bits. But that's not important.
What's important is that unlike a byte, which is a measure of size, bps is a
measure of speed. Simply stated, the higher the bps, the less time it
takes. It's a lot like Miles Per Hour (MPH) in that sense. Think how long it
would take to get from New York to California in a car going 55MPH. Now
think how long that same trip would take in a jet going 700MPH. Simply
stated, the higher the MPH (or bps), the less time it takes.
As a rule, we use bps as a measure of the speed of
getting data from one computer to another across a network (including the
Internet). And we use "K" for a thousand, "M" for a million, and "G" for a
billion, as usual. Table 5 sums it all up. The fourth column shows some
alternative abbreviations. The rule-of-thumb is that an uppercase B always
stands for "bytes" while a lowercase "b" always stands for "bits per
second".
| Abbreviation |
Spoken |
Bits per Second |
(English) |
Alternative Abbreviations |
| Kbps |
Kilobits |
1,000 |
Thousand |
Kb or Kbits |
| Mbps |
Megabits |
1,000,000 |
Million |
Mb or Mbits |
| Gbps |
Gigabits |
1,000,000,000 |
Billion |
Gb or Gbits |
Table 5
The most common use for the bps measurements is in types of
Internet accounts. To give you a sense of how the speeds relate to one
another in terms of "wait time", Table 6 compares the amount of time it
would take to download (copy) a 1MB file from a computer on the Internet to
your own computer. (Since a byte is equal to 8 bits, a 1 MB file is roughly
8,000,000 bits.) Also, I'm using "Broadband" as a general term for Cable and
DSL accounts, which are actually available in speeds ranging from about 256
Kbps to 1,000 Kbps. Note, too, that 1,000 Kbps is the same as 1 Mbps.
, but has nothing to do with pain
or car rentals. In this context, "Hertz" pays homage to a guy named Heinrich
Rudolf Hertz who figured out that radio and electricity have frequencies that
you can measure in
. But that's getting more technical
(and boring) than we need to be.
- a little chip
about the size of a toenail that can work at a pretty fast speed. Exactly how
fast it can work is measured in terms of "instructions per second", which
roughly corresponds to Hertz's idea of frequency. Of course, microprocessors can
do thousands, millions, or billions of instructions per second. So that brings
good old K, M, and G into the picture once again, as summarized in Table 7.
So there you have it. To summarize, K, M, and G are all
abbreviations for numbers:
The letters that come after are either a measure of size or
capacity, or a measure of speed, as follows:
You're becoming dangerously close to be a full-fledged
computer nerd here...
Admin Raju Shresth
As is always the case with speed, "faster" means "less time
waiting" for a human. The speed of the processor only affects "local tasks".
It has nothing to do with how long it takes to get your e-mail or download
stuff from the Internet. The speed of your Internet connection is all that
matters there. The speed of your microprocessor has more to do with how long
it takes to render changes to huge graphic images, or produce movies, or
similar complex tasks that require a lot of internal calculations on the
computer's part. 
इन्टरनेट
बादशाह कम्पनी गुगलको मेल जिमेल सबैको पहिरो रोजाईमा पर्दछ । कहिलेकाही
इन्टरनेट कनेक्शन नभएको बेला आफ्ना महत्वपूर्ण डकुमेन्टहरु हेर्न पाइदैन ।
यसको विकल्प के त ? गुगलले आफ्ना युजरहरुको चाहना अनुसारका नयाँ नयाँ
एप्लीकेशन ल्याउने गरेको छ । त्यसको पछिल्लो उदाहरणको रुपमा आएको छ ।
गुगलको अफलाइन मेल सेवा । यो एप्लीकेशनबाट हामीले इन्टरनेट कनेक्शन नभएको
बेलामा पनि आफ्नो मेल चेक गर्न सक्छौं । अरुलाई मेल पठाउन सक्छौं तर इमेलमा
एटयाच गरेका कुराहरु भने डाउनलोड र अपलोड गर्न सकिदैन ।