Are "65k" and "65KB" the same?

Question

Are "65k" and "65KB" the same?

Answer 1

Probably.

Technically 65k just means 65 thousand (monkeys perhaps?). You would have to take into account the context.

Answer 2

65KB normally means 66560 bytes. 65k means 65000, and says nothing about what it is 65000 of. If someone says 65k bytes, they might means 65KB...but they're mispeaking if so. Some people argue for the use of KiB to mean 66560 bytes, since k means 1000 in the metric system. Everyone ignores them, though.

Note: a lowercase b would mean bit, rather than bytes. 8Kb = 1KB. When talking about transmission rates, bits are usually used.

Edit: As Joel mentions, hard drive manufacturers often treat the K as meaning 1000. So hard disk space of 65KB would often mean 65000. Thumb drives and the like tend to use K as meaning 1024, though.

Answer 3

it depends on how reliable the source is... usually a small k is kps or "kilobits per second" wich you should divide by 8 to get it in KBps

Answer 4

In terms data transfer rates - 65k implies 65 kilobits and 65KB implies 65 KiloBytes

Check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_units

cheers

Answer 5

In general, yes, they're both 65 kilobytes (66,560 bytes).

Sometimes the abbreviations are tricky with casing. If it had been "65Kb", it would have correctly meant kilo*bits*.

Answer 6

65k is 65,000 of something 65KB is 66,560 bytes (65*1024)

Answer 7

A kilobyte (KB) is 1024 bytes.
Kilo stands for 1000.

So, going purely by notation: (65k = 65,000) != (65KB = 66,560).

However, if you're talking about memory you're probably always going to see KB (even if its written as k).

Generally, KB = k. It's all very confusing really.

Answer 8

65k may be the same as 65KB, but remember, 65KB is larger than 65Kb.

Case is important, as are units.

Psto, you're right. This is an absolute minefield!

Answer 9

From Wikipedia for Kilobyte:

It is abbreviated in a number of ways: KB, kB, K and Kbyte.

In other words, they could both be abbreviations for Kilobyte. However, using only a lowercase 'k' is not a standard abbreviation, but most people will know what you mean.

Answer 10

Strictly speaking, the former is not specifying the unit: 65,000 What? So, the two can't really be compared.

However, in general speech then most people mean 65K (note it's normally uppercase) to mean 65 KiloBytes (or 65 * 1024 Bytes).

Note 65Kb usually denotes Kilo*Bits*.

Answer 11

65kB can be interpreted to mean either 65 * 1000 = 65,000 bytes or 60 * 2^10 = 66,560 bytes.

You can read about all this and kibibytes at Wikipedia.

Answer 12

As many said, K is tecnically Kilo, meaning Thousand (of anything) and comes from greek. But you can assume different units depending on the context. As data transfer rates are most often measured in bits, K in this context could be assumed to be Kilo Bits. When talking about data storage, a file's size, etc. K can be assumed to be Kilo Bytes.

Answer 13

Like most have said, 65KB is 66560, 65k is 65000. 65KB means 66560 BYTES, and 65k is ambiguous. So they're not the same.

Additionally, since there are a few people equating "8 bits = 1 byte", I thought I'd add a little bit about that.

Transmission rates are usually in bits per second, because the grouping into bytes might not be directly related to the actual transmission clock rate.

Take for instance 9600 baud with RS232 serial ports. There are always exactly 9600 bits going out per second (+/- maybe a 5% clock tolerance). However, if those bits are grouped as N-8-1, meaning "no parity, 8 bits, 1 stop bit", then there are 10 bits per byte and so the byte rate is 960 bytes/second maximum. However, if you have something odd like E-8-2, or "even parity, 8 bits, 2 stop bits" then it's 12 bits per byte, or 800 bytes/second. The actual bits are going out at exactly the same rate, so it only makes sense to talk about the bits/second rate.

So 1 byte might be 8 bits, 9 bits (ie parity), 10 bits (ie N81,E71,N72), 11 bits(ie E81), 12 bits (ie E82), or whatever. There are lots of combinations of ways with just RS232-style transmission to get very odd byte rates. If you throw in RS or ECC correction, you could have even more bits per byte. Then there's 8b/10b, 6b/8b, hamming codes, etc...

Answer 14

(b)it is not (B)yte. (k)ilo is not (K)elvin. 65k = 65 kilo. kilo-what? 65KB = 65 Kelvin-Byte. Huh? If you meant kB, did you want 65000b or 66560b? If the latter is correct, then maybe you want kiB.