Not very computer smart,Have question!!!!!!

sweetrose3 wrote:
- Hi. I have a demension L700cx. It came with 128
- rams,20Gb.My computer says i have 18.6Gb capacity,
- First of all when i bought my Dell it did say(the
- paper work) 20Gb of space, So where did the rest of
- it go? why does'nt it say 20Gb capacity? Ok it says
- that with now(Had my puter now for a year this
- month) 13.2Gb of space. My 2nd question is this> Is
- 13.2Gb of space left alot? Or alittle? should i be
- concerned with this amount of space left? Thanks!!!
-

Hi,

You have the correct drive.
Here is how it works -

The reason for this is in the way that hard drive makers calculate hard drive space and the way that Windows calculates hd space. Hard drive makers calculate as follows:
1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1000 kilobyte = 1 megabyte
1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte.

Windows calculates hard drive space as follows:
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte

This difference in in the way Windows calculates what a gigabyte is and the way that the hard drive makers calculate what a gigabyte is causes windows to report total gigabytes of space of about 7% less than what the hard drive maker reports. All of the space is there, and all of the space is available. The difference is in how each calculates a gigabyte.

Try this validation:

1 / 1.024 (bytes to kilobytes)
/ 1.024 (kilobytes to megabytes)
/ 1.024 (megabytes to gigabytes)
= .9313

For your drive 20 GB * .9313 = 18.626 GB

Mis Dos Centavos,
Darrell

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For the second part of your question, you have around two-thirds of space left on your hard drive. That's probably plenty to hold you for awhile. Of course, if you start downloading alot of large programs, files, etc., or space-intensive things like videos or bitmap photos it could fill up pretty quickly.

Richard

Dimension 4100
Pentium III, 933 MHz
20GB Ultra ATA-100 Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
256MB 133MHz SDRAM
Windows ME
17" M781s Monitor
32MB NVIDIA TNT2 M64 AGP Graphics Card
48X Max Variable CD-ROM Drive
QPS Que! 16x10x40 CD-RW Drive
Soundblaster 64V PCI with Dell Jukebox
harman/kardon Speakers
V.90/56K Telephony Modem for WindowsME-Sound Option
QuietKey Keyboard
MS Intellimouse
Xerox Docuprint M750 Inkjet Printer

...and for the third part of your question (was there a third part?)...you still have a lot of space left; for example I've used about 5.7gb out of 40 and that would include the OS, Dragon Naturally Speaking, many downloads, etc.
You can always free up a little space by ridding your system of things you no longer use. Have a great day.

Dimension 8100Windows Millenium