In decimal systems, kilo stands for 1,000, but in binary systems, a kilo is 1,024 (2 to the 10th power).
Therefore,
1 kilobyte = 1,024 bytes
but it is often used loosely as a synonym for 1,000 bytes. For example, a computer that has 256K main memory can store approximately 256,000 bytes (or characters) in memory at one time.
In computer literature, kilobyte is usually abbreviated as K or Kb.