i realize i'm responding to an old post here, but thought this comment is useful to general readers shopping for gear / planning trips.

peterpan is absolutely correct: the general tendency of outdoors gear manufacturers is to misrepresent the weight of their products, making them appear lighter than actual. my guess is this is also true for bicycle gear.

i took 42 common, popular backpacking/camping items to the local post office after hours over the course of a few weeks and used the fancy digital scale and weighed them, then compared actual weights to specified weights. i'm assuming the scales in our local po get accurately calibrated periodically (i cross checked weights between their 2 scales, looked good).

of those 42 items, 21 had specified/nominal weights (on some items no weight was specified or too old to look up). of the 21 items where comparison was possible, only 1 item was actually lighter than specified, all others were heavier, many by a significant (>10%) amount. tents and packs in particular had high error.

so, 95%+ of this gear is heavier than claimed.

these items include products made by msr, gregory, vasque, sierra designs, rei, campmor, or, leki, thermarest and others between 1990 and 2004. this is almost all "lightweight" gear where weight would be a critical factor in the purchasing decision. i have one pig tent and sleeping pad for lazy camping.

the most erroneous stated weight was low by 33%. the only item which was lighter than spec'ed was a thermarest 30"x77"x3" luxury edition pad which weighs nearly 7 pounds (not used for backpacking).