Dear Geek,
Bytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes…What does it really mean? I am getting a new iPod, but they are all different memory sizes. I don’t know how I can decide on a size if I don’t know what any of these sizes actually mean. How big is a GB really? How can I make sure I have enough space?
Sincerely,
iConfused
Dear confused,
The very smallest value of memory is a bit. You can think of a bit as a value of 1 or 0, (on or off).
A byte is the equivalent of 8 bits, and has the memory of one character.
A Kilobyte is 1,024 bytes and can hold around 2 or 3 paragraphs of text.
A Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes or 1,024 Kilobytes. It can hold 873 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters) or 4 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters).
A Gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, 1,048,576 Kilobytes, or 1,024 Megabytes. This can hold 894,784 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters), 4,473 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters), 640 webpages (with an average 1.6MB file size), 341 digital photos (with an average 3MB file size), 256 MP3 audio files (with an average 4MB file size), or one 650 CD.
A Terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, 1,024 Gigabytes, or 1,048,576 Megabytes. 916,259,689 pages of plaintext (1,200 characters), 4,581,298 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters), 655,360 web pages (with 1.6MB average file size), 349,525 digital pictures (with 3MB average file size), 262,144 MP3 audio files (with 4MB average file size), 1,613 650MB CD’s, 233 4.38GB ’,or 40 25GB Blu-ray discs.
The size you need really depends on how many songs, apps, photos, and other things you are wanting to be able to have on your iPod. You have 2,000 songs on your computer? That will be around 7.8 GB, but knowing an iPod is “missing memory” (see that blog here), and maybe there are a few apps you are looking at, so you may want to go up to at least a 16 GB iPod.
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