Here’s an interesting case:

Western Digital Corp. is offering free software to about 1 million consumers to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging that its computer hard drives stored less material than promised — a discrepancy stemming from high-tech’s different standards for sizing up digital data. …

The lawsuit against Western Digital alleged the company’s 80-gigabyte hard drive had an actual capacity of 74.4 gigabytes. If not for that 7 percent shortfall, the buyer could have stored an additional 80 hours of digital music or 5,600 digital pictures, the suit claimed.

So, these people just now figured out that storage media don’t really have as much capacity as advertised? Where have they been? I realized this the very first time I got a hard drive. Heck, every time I burn a 4.7 GB DVD and can’t put more than 4.4 GB onto it, I realize this.

I still don’t understand why they do this, how they get the higher number. I just know that they do, and so has anyone who has bought more than one piece of storage media and bothered to look at the capacity measurement. But these people filed a class action lawsuit? Did they really buy the drive thinking, “I can store 1,142 hours of of digital music or 80,000 digital pictures,” and then got really upset when they saved 1,062 hours of music or 74,400 pictures and then ran out of space? Or did the lawyers just notice the discrepancy like everyone else and see a big chance to file a tort case?