Although a discrepancy between the traditional and modern definitions of kilobyte has led to Seagate Technology offering a rebate on its hard drives, a Seagate representative confirmed that Australians will not be eligible for the refund.
Earlier this week, Seagate Technology, the world's largest hard-drive maker, announced it would offer customers a five percent refund on drives bought during the last six years following a lawsuit over the definition of a "gigabyte".
The case for a rebate began in 2005 when Sarah Cho and Michael Lazar started a class action in the US because Seagate defines one kilobyte as 1,000 bytes while operating systems define it as 1,024 bytes. Cho and Lazar felt that Seagate was mis-labelling its drives, leading consumers to believe they were getting more than they were.
Seagate settled out of court, but denied any wrongdoing in a formal statement. "Seagate believes that its advertising and other business practices were and are proper in all respects. However, because of the expense and burden of litigation, Seagate believes that resolving the matter through settlement is in the best interests of Seagate and its customers."
According to a legal notice regarding the settlement, consumers are only eligible for a refund if you bought a Seagate drive form an authorised reseller or distributor between 22 March 2001 and 26 September 2007 in the US. Most Australians do not fit into this category.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of similar cases involving the definition of a gigabyte. In 2003, Apple, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba were sued over hard-disk sizes by a group of users. That case has not yet been resolved.
Peter Judge from ZDNet UK contributed to this story.
Like this article? Click below to send it to your mobile for free!
D
31/10/2007 03:31 PM
About time that companies that used Gigabytes in their specs got pulled up for not using 1024 daedalus-geek.freehostia.com
Report offensive content
Brad
31/10/2007 08:53 PM
This is the sort of thing the ACCC should looking at. Instead the Govt has them stuffing up broadband internet.
Report offensive content
Ian
02/11/2007 12:23 PM
Yes, what a great win for the industry. More money in the lawyer's hands rather than on development of technology. I'm sorry but regardless of your personal preference on the definition of a KB it has always been quite clear in hard drive documentation that they used 1000 bytes. In reality I doubt that the difference between the figures would make much difference regarding usage anyway. People tend to either use only a fraction of what they have or fill it to capacity regardless of its size. This is just a tall poppy exercise and grab for cash.
Report offensive content
spc_75
02/11/2007 08:47 PM
I'm happy about this, whilst Aussies get no compensation is a win for the consumer anyway. For years i have been irked about DVD's claim to be 4.7GB when in actual fact they are 4.48GB perhaps now this will change?
Report offensive content
kirbykia
04/12/2007 04:25 PM
@Ian Bzzz.... Got HDD in my gruby hands that says 1024 not 1000... It was people that knew nothing of computers that decided 1000 and it has caused many problems becuase of it.
Report offensive content
i hate fools
16/12/2007 06:07 PM
bunch of fools. dont they have anything better to do. the definition had been like that forever and even a tiny bit of research would show this. in no way is it misleading. you pay for 500GB you get 500GB. END OF STORY. the PC has a different definition - so what?
Report offensive content
I "hate" americans...
07/02/2008 11:24 AM
Its the price seagate pays for dealing with idiotic americans...a greedy litigious society that will spell its own doom...hopefully companies will charge them through the nose, because of their "practice", or pull out of the US altogether!
Report offensive content