"It's the same thing as when you buy a PC or a MAC. You're told how big the hard drive is BEFORE it's formatted and BEFORE the Operating System is installed and BEFORE all the cute little programs that the PC manufacturers install without your permission.How is this different?"
It's different because formatting a hdd DOES NOT take up space. Formatting DELETES everything from a hard drive. How does deleting everything take up space? It doesn't, that's how. Storage manufacturers use base 10 math not binary when they say how big the hard dive, thumb drive, dvd, etc. is. There IS NOT 1000MB per GB, there's 1024. The whole formatting line is a lie, and people like you propagate the lie when you use it to make a point. If you want to know how big a hdd, or whatever, really is, multiply what they're selling by .9317. For example, my 500GB is really 465.85GB. It has nothing to do with my OS, formatting or anything else storage manufacturers care to use to justify the lie. It's math.
"Quite possibly you should sell your naivete and bottle it."
Advice you should take to heart yourself. By the way, it's naiveté, but you were close enough to make yet another point i guess.
