Premium Bonds: Are they worth it? Discussion Area

ED

srvr - Thanks for the interesting take on Premium Bond ownership. In a way, an extension of pocket-money saving in childhood. Well done.

harryhound - I know an elderly lady rather like your late mother. Helpful reading, thanks.

mushhead

Paul_Herring wrote: »

(a) the definition by a store selling them
(b) a computer user used to the binary numbering system would expect such a drive to have.
(c) the result of (b)/(a) to 2dp
(d) The new 'units' proposed that the drive should mention to remove the confusion between (a) and (b) and would result in (c) being 100%. Assume that the 160 is to be retained (for those following, it should contain the number of bytes mentioned in (b))

A 160GB hard drive is a decimal GB which is worked out as follow:-
1kB = 1000B
1MB = 1000kB
1GB = 1000MB

Now when a pc looks at this it works on a binary principle as all computers do whereby:-
1kB = 1024B
1MB = 1024kB
1GB = 1024MB

so therefore a 160GB hd is actually 160,000,000,000 B which, when converted to binary is equal to 149.01GB = 160,000,000,000/(1024*1024*1024)
The reason this is so is because pc work on electricity, which is either on or off, hence the binary code, and so the closest you get to a thousand in binary is 1024(decimal) or 1000000000(binary). This should also help explain why pen drives and the like are, for example, sold in 256MB (10000000kB) or 512MB (100000000kB) and will sometimes actually be a true MB rather than a decimal one. Unfortunately there is no regulation on this and it is just the manufacturers way of making them look bigger. You will probably notice the same problem with CDRs and DVDRs


therefore c) is equal to 0.9313/1

Paul_Herring

mushhead wrote: »

A 160GB hard drive is a decimal GB which is worked out as follow:-
1kB = 1000B

Actually, this one (alone) tends to be 1024

1MB = 1000kB
1GB = 1000MB

1/2 a mark

Now when a pc looks at this it works on a binary principle as all computers do whereby:-
1kB = 1024B
1MB = 1024kB
1GB = 1024MB

1 mark.

You missed out (d) which is gibibyte

SusieC_3

Hi - This is my first posting!
My Mum bought Premium bonds at Christmas and birthdays for 25 members of my family over 5 years - NOT ONE OF US HAS EVER WON A PENNY!

This HAS to be a world record - What do you think?

SusieC

SusieC_3

Hi Folks - My first posting!

My Mum bought Premium Bonds for 25 members of my family over 5 years for every birthday and Christmas - NOT ONE OF US HAS EVER WON A PENNY!
The first ones were purchased in 1965.
Got to be a world record - Right?

harryhound

Hi SuzieC,

Welcome to MSE.

Are you all sure that your mum registered your address as your address ?

My mum (see my posting a bit further back) did something similar for her grandchildren BUT registered them with automatic reinvestment at her address before hiding them behind the gas meter.

The boy, who is older than the girl, got significantly more (ouch). Legally I think she should have given them their bonds on their 18th birthday, not forced them to wait until they were both in their mid 20's.

I do have a problem, I've still got 100 GBP in the name of her godson, trouble is, he is now an American citizen aged about 35 and I have no idea where he lives and mum's old house no longer exists !! (advice anyone ?).

Have the five of you written to National Savings because, when I had to track down mum's holdings, my figures did not exactly agree with theirs. Reinvestment explained some of the difference, unreinvestment explained other differences and the mice chewing them did not help and I spent a whole day ticking off the list from NS against a big wad of bits of paper from Mum. I found one bond that was missing from the NS list and, when queried, got back what was in effect a "woops" reply from NS. (Are post offices 100% reliable ?)

We never did manage to get the figures to exactly match but the people at NS were really helpful (Barclays Bank take note).

One last thought, should we all worry about the "unclaimed/dormant accounts" that the Government is intending to put to good use ?

Harry.

PS You can go back and delete your duplicate posting !

harryhound

Paul_Herring wrote: »

Actually, this one (alone) tends to be 1024
1/2 a mark
1 mark.

You missed out (d) which is gibibyte

mushhead

Hi Paul & Mush,

Have you got lost wandering amongst the threads ?

Try these escape routes:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1kbps+in+bps

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/speedtest.html#77

Harry

PS Are there any of my indian friends out there, who would like to start a thread explaining a lac and a crore? There are more of them using this numbering convention than there are UK english speakers, who are all being converted to American by spell checkers anyway.

susi333

Oh dear I really am confused now. I 'invested' £30,000 last May and have won in total £600 in 50's and 100. Should I consider myself lucky or unlucky ?

Paul_Herring

susi333 wrote: »

Oh dear I really am confused now. I 'invested' £30,000 last May and have won in total £600 in 50's and 100. Should I consider myself lucky or unlucky ?

600/30000 * 12/11 = 2.18% AER so far. Equivilant to around 2.18/80% = 2.7% gross for a basic rate taxpayer. I'd say unlucky if you were comparing it to a savings account.

gardener

I only keep my bonds for 2 yrs now,then cash them in and replace with same amount,I noticed that since the new ernie computer was introduced a few years ago the newer bonds purchased were winning regularly,older ones not,and that pattern has continued,since doing that the last couple of years ive won more with the same amount of bonds than i did in the total of the previous ten years