Load testing a Gmail account

We have spoken of others testing the Gmail accounts for spam (I even put my own address of stenz77@gmail.com on here in order to see about spam - I rarely check the account, but all 100 or so spam messages sent to it were caught over the time that I have had it).

But Slashdot points to Kevin Rose who is load testing his account as for the amount of attachments it can take (in terms of storage and all fo that).

An interesting thing to note is that it exposes a common issue when people refer to 1GB (in this case it is the amount of storage space that you are allowed on Google).
Most people can vaguely grasp the concep that 1GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes, or 1,000 MB - but technically that isn't entirely right. As a result, you can actually go over 100% of your Gmail storage.
The reason for this is that a megabyte kilobyte (KB) is actuallly 1024 bytes (each byte is 8 bits, and each bit is made up of either 0 or 1). And then a (MB) is actually 1024 kilobytes . A gigabyte (GB) is actually 1024 megabytes.
So instead of 1,000,000 bytes, a GB is actually 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes - or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

So what happens is that the 100% marker of your account registers 100% at 1,000,000,000, but then when you go over that and approach the actual limit (a real GB), then you see it go over 100%.

Really it is terribly confusing and it is only because marketing wants to make it "easier" for the average consumer to understand.

In the end it starts to make them annoyed.

Posted by Eric at July 27, 2004 12:32 PM | TrackBack