Cheap(skate) Flashdrives

I'm sure we are familiar with flash drives, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper every year. There are several reasons that flash drives become cheaper:
- cheaper materials,
- cheaper manufacturing cost (V/ULSI),
- cheaper labor (pity those guys in China),
- cheaper distribution chain (so many computer stores around),
+ being 'cheapskate'.



In January I purchased Kingston DTIG3/8G. Let's grab fdisk to tell us about its actual user-addressable capacity.


Disk /dev/sdc: 8010 MB, 8010194944 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 973 cylinders, total 15644912 sectors

Recently I purchased the very same model from the same store, 6 months after the earlier purchase, in a way I feel like I've been being ripped off. See what I've got.

Disk /dev/sdb: 7784 MB, 7784628224 bytes
192 heads, 30 sectors/track, 2639 cylinders, total 15204352 sectors

To me 7784 MB is barely 8GB, duh!