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[Reply #15 on:]

http://www.tech-faq.com/difference-between-bit-rate-and-baud-rate.html

And then there's control bits, packets and data compression.

I'm happier with bytes per second. It tells me how fast my HD is filling up.

[Reply #16 on:]

No Mike, baud rate is the symbol rate, bit rate is the numbers of bits per second (neither is the information rate, technically, since you need to know the entropy in the message to calculate that).  So bit rate = baud rate * log2(number of symbols)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud#Relationship_to_gross_bit_rate

For instance in English the baud rate could be defined to be the number of words per second in a system where a codeword is used to represent a word (index into a table of words, for instace), alternatively the baud rate might be the letters/second, or it could be actual bits/s in an ASCII coding, its up to the designer to specify what the "symbol" is.

The information rate in English is typically between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per letter, according to some studies.