2007-02-01 10:17:21 · 5 answers · asked by New_Town_Karachi_Pakistan 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Software
It is just an approximation, because kilo is 1000 in the decimal system. Since the binary representation of 1000 is 1111101000, which is not an simple power of 2, a kilobyte refers to 2^10 (10000000000), which is close enough to 10^3.
And, the reason computers use the binary system is because a memory bit is either on (1), or off (0). There is nothing in-between.
To further confuse people, a byte is 8 bits (a nibble is 4 bits), and transfer speeds are shown in bits per second (or Baud). So, when you sign up for an ISP who advertises download speeds of 1.5Mb, this really means 1.5Mbaud = 1500 kilobits per second ~= 188 kilobytes per second.
Sorry - I got carried away... Knowledge is very interesting and very addictive :-)
2007-02-01 10:48:39 · answer #1 · answered by Extemporaneous 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A kilobyte is 2 to the 10th power = 1024.
The reason is that computers use 'bits' for everything, a value of 0 or 1... so its a base 2 system.
-dh
2007-02-01 18:22:48 · answer #2 · answered by delicateharmony 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A kilobyte is 1024 bytes (not 1000 bytes, but close.) The reason why it's not exactly 1000 bytes, is because computers count in binary and everything work in 2's. E.g. if you buy RAM or a flash disk it will have a value of: 2MB / 4MB / 8MB / 16MB / 32MB / 64MB / 128MB / 256MB / 512MB / 1024MB…. As you can see, using a value of exactly 1000 for a kilobyte would just complicate things in the binary world.
2007-02-01 18:21:32 · answer #3 · answered by Devil Dog 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
It's a slight misnomer. A kilobyte is 2^10 (two to the tenth power) bits .
2007-02-01 18:24:49 · answer #4 · answered by Bill F 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
it is representative of 10 days of 24 hrs each
2007-02-01 18:20:59 · answer #5 · answered by Nick H 1 · 0⤊ 4⤋