Four computer users from Los Angeles this week lodged a claim against Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba, says Reuters.
The allegations relate to advertising for the hard drive capabilities of the companies' computers. According to the Reuters report, hard drive capacities are described in adverts in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
The result, says the report on the lawsuit, is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity.
So, according to those bringing the claim, a purchaser buying a hard drive with an advertised capacity of 150 gigabytes will take home a 140 gigabyte hard drive. And there is a lot, observe the plaintiffs, that could be done with the missing 10 gigabytes.
The plaintiffs have asked Los Angeles Superior Court to prohibit the eight companies from carrying out the alleged deception, to force the companies to advertise the practice and to award damages.
None of the manufacturers have yet commented on the suit.