Not so in the case of storage/network products. Their manufacturers believe in the use of base 10 numbering, not base 2. To them 1 terabyte is actually 1000 gigabytes, not 1024 gigabytes (which is the main reason why a 300GB hard drive is only shown as a ~280GB drive in reality).
And correctly so. A lot of people, incorrectly believe that the terms kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc... refer to each 10th power of 2 (2^10, 2^20, 2^30 and 2^40 respectively), whereas the correct term for these amounts are kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte and tebibyte respectively.
Hard disk manufacturers are correct in their usage for the more popular terms refering to each 3rd power of 10 (10^3, 10^6, 10^9 and 10^12).
This said however, it is confusing when the SI prefixes (Système International dUnités) have become such popular terms for the binary prefixes, far surpassing the correct terms. You will notice how no hard disk manufacturer has made attempts to clarify this misconception, as doing so would make their products seem inferior.
In short, hard disk and network device makers are technically correct, and the rest of us are wrong. 👍
On a side note, I can already think of one piece of audio software which weighs in at an almighty 550gigs, showing that for some, a terabyte may already be a necessity.
