There are three types of memory, video, storage and RAM. Storage memory is on your hard drive and is used to store everything that's software or virtual on your computer, such as programs, files, settings, etc. If it's part of your computer and you can't throw it out of the window, it's software. If you throw it out of the window and it comes back, it's a cat. Anyways, video memory is memory that is set aside specifically for usage by your video card or onboard video (this doesn't take any away from your RAM or hard drive). It functions much like RAM. Finally, RAM acts as a scratchpad for your computer, keeping track of everything that's not "finalized" or saved on your hard drive (everything in RAM, by the way, is lost when your computer is turned off). All three are seperate, distinct types of memory, but they are all measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes, or even terabytes! Bytes are the smallest unit of memory. Kilobytes are roughly equivalent to one thousand bytes, about enough to hold one page of typed text. Megabytes are the next biggest amount and, you guessed it, are about equal to one thousand kilobytes. Gigabytes follow in the same fashion (they hold A LOT of information), and so do terabytes. *~Trivia Warning!~*The latin rootgiga means "giant", and tera means "monster"!
So what's good for each type of memory? Ideally, the hard drive should hold the largest amount, followed by RAM and then video memory. Although these amounts constantly change (hey, having 16 MB of RAM used to be impressive), a good hard drive should hold at least 20 GB, probably a lot more if you're into photos, music, and especially videos (some models hold well past 200 GB!). RAM should be at least 1024 MB or above, and video memory varies with what you want to do. If you bought a computer to gun down and frustrate thousands across the globe while making it look like a high quality movie, 512 MB is stellar (even more is probably unnecessary, but FANTASTIC!). However, if you're just using Word, you won't need much at all.
Let's say :
1 bit=1 binary (0s and 1s) digit
1 byte=8 bit
1 kilobyte=1024 bytes
1 megabyte=1024 kilobytes (Sounds like a lot; it isn't really.)
1 gigabyte=1024 megabytes (You could say it's big)
1 terrabyte=1024 gigabytes (Humungous)
In video or tapes, an "exabyte" or "exobyte" is up to about a year straight of recording.
Hope this answers your question thoroughly, and hey, you just might have learned something!
The size of memory storage devices is measured with units in ascending order of size) starting from : - Bits (0 or 1 in binary coding) - Bytes (8 bits) - Kilobytes (1000 bytes) - Megabytes (1,000,000 bytes) - Gigabytes (1,000,000,000 bytes) (one billion bytes) - Terabytes (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) (one trillion bytes) - Petabytes (1,024 Terabytes) - Exhabytes (1,024 Petabytes) N.B. Note that, Petabytes and Exhabytes have not been mastered by modern technology. Or am I wrong??? Hope this helped.
In its most basic sense computer storage is measured in bits with each bit storing a binary number of either a 0 or a 1. This then expands to a byte which is 8 bits followed by a kilobyte(KB) which is technically 1024 bytes. Expanding from this there are megabytes(MB) which are 1024 kilobytes and gigabytes(GB) which are 1024 megabytes and are the most common size currently used in data storage.
We'll do this on a rounded scale, for the sake of even numbers :)
8 bits=1 byte
1,000,000 bytes=1 megabyte
1,000 megs=1 gigabyte
Modern HDD's are typically in the gigabyte storage range.
40/80/160/320 are all common storage capacities.
A data storage device for computerized information can be measured in several ways based on different types of attributes:
Device/media type - Disk drive, tape, SSD, USB storage, Sd card, cd, DVD, diskette, floppy disk
Storage capacity - How many bytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, or Terabytes it can store
Access Speed - How long does it take for the data to become available
Read/Write Speed -How long does it take to read or write the information
Storage Media - magnetic media, optical media (read-only, or rewriteable))
Physical/Electronic Interface - SATA, PATA (aka IDE EIDE), ESDI, SCSI, USB, firewire, etc.
Form Factor - The size of the media device to fit into a cabinet, cage, drawer, or slot
A computer with 3MB of memory storage capacity can be limited. This will be the size of a single photo taken it cannot be useful in terms of data storage.
Gigabyte. its the measurement of the memory size of a storage device :)
A "word," in computing, is a standard memory size used for data storage. The most popular word sizes for modern computers is 16, 32, or 64 bits.Some systems or programming languages don't declare specific sizes for variables and use "word," "half-word," and "double word" to describe how much storage space you are allocating.This means that if you have a system with a 32 bit word size, and you declare a double word integer, you have declared a 64 bit integer.
Virtual memory is used to increase the size of working memory in the system main memory by using the locations in secondary storage such as harddisk.
You hit the Windows start button, click computer, and then it should say your memory size under the (C:) drive.
All memory cards of equal size will provide equal storage, but consider getting SDHC cards for the highest capacity.
The size the virtual memory is determined by the size of the page file which saved in your hard disk. Virtual memory only uses the hard disk.
ExpressCard
Computer sizes vary widely. They are sized by the amount of memory they have, their processors, and the size of the tower.
Word size of a computer may have different meanings depending on the computer's architecture.On computers with a fixed word size it is the number of binary bits lor decimal digits in its arithmetic registers (and usually its words in memory). On most fixed word size computers complete words are processed in parallel.On computers with a variable word size it is usually the number of bytes, alphanumeric characters, or decimal digits in a "word" in memory. Different "words" in memory may have different sizes depending on their use in the program, the size may be specified in a variety of ways: in the instruction, in a field in the data, etc. On variable word size computers the "words" are processed serially one byte, alphanumeric character, or decimal digit at a time.Some computers have both fixed and variable word size used in different instructions.
It depends on the context. Size could refer to the physical dimension of the computer - or the storage capacity of its internal memory or hard-drive.
The only difference is the memory size, with the 4gb having more storage space.