In reply to a post by yarwell:

they just say mb's to make it look fast.

5200 kbits/s, 5.2 Mbits/s - whichever takes your fancy.

It's still ten times faster then the 512k your were claiming, fool.

explian this then?
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/ehrgl.png[/IMG]

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Apr-12 06:28:11)

That bytes, there's 8 bits to the byte, so 637 x 8 = 5096Kbs

Capital B = Bytes, little b = bits.

Hopefully I've remembered correctly, I do agree it all gets very confusing.

Edited by R0NSKI (Wed 25-Apr-12 06:39:47)

RONSKI is correct,

I presume the screenshot is from a preview release of windows 8. In which case MS Windows has shown downloads like this for as long as I can remember, and I started with windows 95 and the WWW.

The important bit is the case of letter B, which alas is an importance that many ignore.

In reply to a post by creakycopperline:

In reply to a post by yarwell:

they just say mb's to make it look fast.

5200 kbits/s, 5.2 Mbits/s - whichever takes your fancy.

It's still ten times faster then the 512k your were claiming, fool.

explian this then?
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/ehrgl.png[/IMG]

Connection speeds are always expressed in some multiple of bits per second. That's because bits are being transmitted.

The size of a file is usually expressed in bytes. Although the most common size of a byte these days is 8 bits, as has been posted, the number of bits in a byte depends entirely on the file structure of the system on which it is stored.

File download programs such as the one in the display you gave a link to quite sensibly show the download speed in multiples of bytes, reflecting the content of what is being downloaded rather than the technical bits per second. If the file was on an 11-bit byte system and so were you, the byte rate of the download would be lower, but the bit rate the same. The download would take longer, but the speed bits were coming down would be unchanged.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

RONSKI is correct,

I presume the screenshot is from a preview release of windows 8. In which case MS Windows has shown downloads like this for as long as I can remember, and I started with windows 95 and the WWW.

The important bit is the case of letter B, which alas is an importance that many ignore.

A pet hate of mine as it strikes the prefix as well. a 200mb/s connection would be awful. Even Telnet would be like pulling teeth at that speed

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

RONSKI is correct,

I presume the screenshot is from a preview release of windows 8. In which case MS Windows has shown downloads like this for as long as I can remember, and I started with windows 95 and the WWW.

The important bit is the case of letter B, which alas is an importance that many ignore.

A pet hate of mine as it strikes the prefix as well. a 200mb/s connection would be awful. Even Telnet would be like pulling teeth at that speed

Strictly speaking that is a rate of change in pressure, 200 millibars per second.

Edited by simon194 (Wed 25-Apr-12 16:00:32)

In reply to a post by simon194:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

RONSKI is correct,

I presume the screenshot is from a preview release of windows 8. In which case MS Windows has shown downloads like this for as long as I can remember, and I started with windows 95 and the WWW.

The important bit is the case of letter B, which alas is an importance that many ignore.

A pet hate of mine as it strikes the prefix as well. a 200mb/s connection would be awful. Even Telnet would be like pulling teeth at that speed

Strictly speaking that is a rate of change in pressure, 200 millibars per second.

Which goes back to the whole point of using correct units and scales, the fact that some poeple don't know the difference between the shorthand of bits and bytes can only cause confusion.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

RONSKI is correct,

I presume the screenshot is from a preview release of windows 8. In which case MS Windows has shown downloads like this for as long as I can remember, and I started with windows 95 and the WWW.

The important bit is the case of letter B, which alas is an importance that many ignore.

unfortunately no, it's windows 7, the file was only 5MB, but i didn't want to risk overwriting my current install.
although i'm certainly sure a 5 meg file isn't able to do that.

Still the speeds shown are

20.8 MegaBytes of 1.6 GigaBytes (637 kiloBytes/sec)

637 kiloBytes per second is the same as 5096 Kilobits per second, which can also be written as 5 Megabits per second

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Still the speeds shown are

20.8 MegaBytes of 1.6 GigaBytes (637 kiloBytes/sec)

637 kiloBytes per second is the same as 5096 Kilobits per second, which can also be written as 5 Megabits per second

Which makes his original assertion that he is on 500kbs line wrong, he is on a 5Mbs or 5000kbs line as he refuses to use standard units.