This message is for Yvonne and anyone else who might have been wondering about these terms which are batted back and forth so readily by computer users.
A byte is a single exchange of digital data. It is the minimal measurement of any digital exchange. 1 kilobyte = one thousand bytes. 1 megabyte =one thousand kilobytes or one million bytes. In Yvonne's question, she asked how many kilobytes are in 7 megabytes. 7 megabytes = 7 thousand kilobytes or 7 million bytes of data transmitted in a second. That is one incredibly fast transfer speed. You should be aware however, that the figure mentioned is a selling point. You will get that kind of speed some of the time when all conditions are optimal. Many things can impact that speed however. That would include, internet conditions at the time of the transmission, the condition of the fiber optic cable, weather and so on. But what impacts download speed the most are two factors. 1. Your own individual computer, 2. The current usage on that particular internet service provider's network. Let me reassure you Yvonne that even at the worst of times, fiber optic transmission is many times faster than any conventional cable network and often hundreds of times faster than any dial up connection. The reason for that is simple although the technology is light years away from what we started with. Fiber optic is literally information sent through glass fiber by equipment which uses light rather than electricity to carry modulated signals. One fiber optic cable can handle thousands of simultaneous transmissions. By the time the signal reaches your computer of course, it has been converted to standard electronic formats. But the speed between various conversion points is nothing less than phenomenal! It is relatively new technology however and as such, tends to be considerably more expensive when compared to standard cable networks. There are commercials out there which try to claim that new technology has made older style cable systems as fast as fiber optics. They have certainly improved their download speeds but even at their best and most expensive speeds, they are still operating at about half the download speed of a fiber optic system. But why should anyone care about that speed? As technology has developed, software has increased in complexity and has grown in size as a result. In the year 2000, the average size of a computer program was about six hundred kilobytes. Today, the average size of a piece of ordinary software is two megabytes. When a computer user is dealing with software or downloads which are that big or larger, he or she needs to get that information into the computer as quickly as possible. Even with today's amazing improvements in service, the potential for interruption or corruption of a large file during transfer is still a possibility. Here's an example of what I mean. If a computer user downloads a song which contains multiple media such as music, video, static data and functional parameters, one song can be as much as three megabytes in size. If anything interferes with that download before it is completed, the entire program might be rendered useless. The idea therefore is to transmit data as quickly as possible. The longer the connection between two computers exists, the potential for interruption increases exponentially. The introduction of download services like Apple, Audio.com and net flicks, means that more and more people are obtaining their entertainment over the internet rather than purchasing hard copies. Think about that for a moment. How much of the software on your computer has been downloaded, rather than installed from a hard disk? Most computers sold today have hard drives that are at least two hundred and fifty gigabytes in size. That kind of memory was unheard of even ten years ago. A gigabyte is one thousand megabytes. One computer expert surmised that there is more memory in personal computers today than there was in all of the government's computers back in the year, 2000. I believe that one of our list members has a portable hard drive that is several terabytes in size. A terabyte is one thousand gigabytes. As time passes, we, as blind computer users, are relying on the dependability of our computers to provide access to the world around us. In my opinion, the only way to assure us of reliable download capability is by obtaining the fastest possible internet service. That is fiber optic for the moment. JOHN AND LINDA JUSTICE WITH GUIDE DOGS JAKE AND ZACHARY PERSONAL E-MAIL: <mailto:john_just...@verizon.net> john_just...@verizon.net For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
