ITS Tech Tips: Windows Tips

Bits And Bytes

Believe it or not, as complicated as your computer can seem, basically all it does is process 1's and 0's. These 1's and 0's form the binary language. Each “1” and each “0” is known as a “bit”. You've probably heard of the term “byte” (i.e. your computer's memory is 256 megabytes); each byte is made up of 8 bits. As the technology improves, computers are becoming more capable of storage (memory). When computers first came out, we talked about them in terms of kilobytes, or roughly a thousand bytes. Now your basic desktop computer has storage in the gigabyte and even terabyte range. Below is a table that shows the progression in size from kilobyte to yottabyte.

Please note that although we've put this under “Windows” tips, the storage is the same for a Macintosh computer as well.

Page last updated 08/14/06. Send questions or comments to ITS Training.