January 23, 2002

Bits And Bytes

You hear these terms thrown around all the time: 32-bit, 16-bit, 40 Gigabytes, etc. So what exactly do these terms mean and how do they relate to Windows? The term Bit comes from "Binary Digit." In regular counting, we use base-10 counting. Computers use base-2. So, numbers are either 1 or 0. Each one of these 1s or 0s is called a bit. 8 bits is called a byte. So, 00000101 is a byte of 8 bits that translates to the number 5. Now, 16-bits means that instead of having numbers from 0 to 255 available in the 1-byte computer system, now you have numbers from 0 to 65,535! This gives your computer more "room" to work. A true 32-bit processing system means you will have numbers from 0 to 4,294,967,295 available to perform work.