^{Democracy & Technology Blog} More useful metrics

Terabyte-capacity disk drives will soon be available.
A terabyte is 1,000 (actually, 1,024) gigabytes; the PC on your desk probably has 100 or so gigabytes in it; the biggest iPod nano has eight gigabytes.
…. The last time the disk drive crossed such a threshold was in 1991, when the first gigabyte drives were introduced. Back then, all that people used computers for was actual work — spreadsheets and such — and it was hard to imagine why anyone would need so much storage. News accounts noted that a gigabyte would store 1,000 copies of “Gone With the Wind,” without ever explaining why you would want to. Those first gigabyte drives were priced in the neighborhood of $2,000, which on a cost-per-byte basis is 5,000 times as expensive as the latest model.
Even though not many people are expected to buy them, at least initially, it’s not as hard to explain what someone would do with a terabyte drive: record a lot of TV shows and movies. Television, especially high-definition TV, is the savior of the disk-drive industry because it requires vast amounts of storage. A terabyte gets you 250 hours of HD programming: Sopranos, Super Bowls, whatever (emphasis added).
The full article, by Lee Gomes, is here.