[Neil]

The term "megabyte" is ambiguous because it is commonly used to mean either 10002 bytes or 10242 bytes. The confusion originated as compromise technical jargon for the byte multiples that needed to be expressed by the powers of 2 but lacked a convenient name. As 1024 (210) is roughly equal to 1000 (103), roughly corresponding SI multiples began to be used as approximate binary multiples. By the end of 2007, standards and government authorities including IEC, IEEE, EU, and NIST, had addressed this ambiguity by promulgating standards requiring the use of megabyte to describe strictly 10002 bytes and "mebibyte" to describe 10242 bytes. This is reflected in an increasing number of software projects, but most file managers still show file sizes in "megabytes" ("MB") in the binary sense (10242 bytes). The term remains ambiguous and it can follow any one of the following common definitions:

1. 1,000,000 bytes (10002, 106): This is the definition recommended by the International System of Units (SI) and the International Electrotechnical Commission IEC. This definition is used in networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives, Flash-based storage, and DVDs, and is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefix in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance.
2. 1,048,576 bytes (10242, 220): This definition is most commonly used in reference to computer memory, but most software that display file size or drive capacity, including file managers also use this definition. See Consumer confusion (in the "gigabyte" article).
3. 1,024,000 bytes (1000×1024): This is used to describe the formatted capacity of USB flash drives and the "1.44 MB" 3.5 inch HD floppy disk, which actually has a 1,440 KiB capacity, that is, 1,440×1,024 bytes, or 1,474,560 bytes.

I will let you read that and decide if you are right or not. Personally I think of a megabyte as 1,024,000 bytes. It has only been changed so hard drive manufactures can con us into thinking their drives are bigger than they really are.

Originally Posted by blazey

I thought your bandwidth was the speed you get your internet from the telephone exchange thing?

Basically it is Michelle, it has nothing to do with how much data you download/upload