By Jim Seymour
July 21, 1999
When I wrote here about Y2K worries last year and again
earlier this year, I promised a midyear update on how things
are going. The short answer: Things look generally better
than they did then, and it's becoming pretty clear
that--excepting the possibility of a Y2K-induced
recession--forecasts of large-scale, long-lasting, nationwide
problems can be discounted. This doesn't mean that there
won't be scattered problems; that they won't affect you,
your company, and your family; or that some of those
problems won't be serious. Some almost certainly will be.
But on the whole, consciousness about Y2K has been
raised to a level sufficient to avoid most problems and to
deal effectively with many of the remaining ones.
Until now, I've dealt here mainly with PC issues, such as
BIOS and RTC (real-time clock) problems in PC hardware
and software compliance. This is, after all, PC Magazine, so
our focus is determinedly PC-centric. Most of the really
pernicious computer-related Y2K problems, however, have
been in older, larger systems, all the way back to COBOL
code written 20 and 30 years ago for now-aging mainframes.
And it's time, I think, to shift from a focus on our computers
and software to the larger societal issues with Y2K. It
doesn't much matter whether your PC is working properly if
you can't get to work because of fouled-up train switches,
out-of-order traffic lights, shut-down public transit systems,
no electric or phone service, or inoperable elevators. It will
matter a very great deal whether you and your family,
friends, neighbors, and coworkers have potable water, food,
or heat on that key turn-of-the-millennium, winter
weekend--and maybe, if you're unlucky enough to live in an
area with persistent problems, for a while after that.
First, though, a review of where we stand now on PCs and
Y2K.
In the PC world, we've been pretty fortunate: PCs shipping
for the past year have had Y2K-compliant hardware. Beyond
that, most PCs built since the mid-nineties are pretty easy to
fix by replacing a BIOS chip, or sometimes simply by
running a software patch. (You can find an excellent free PC
BIOS test-and-maybe-fix utility, drawn from Symantec's
top-grade software package Norton 2000, at
www.symantec.com/sabu/n2000/fs_retail.html.) Older PCs
remain problematic, but frankly, given the advances in PCs
since 1994 or 1995, you shouldn't be running them for any
critical work anyway. It's time to upgrade, for lots of good
reasons beyond Y2K worries.
In PC networking, there are a fair number of noncompliant
devices out there. The good news is that most networking
products either don't know or don't care about the date, or
are running on a "safe" calendar that begins in the 1970s.
But even some very recent networking devices don't
properly handle the leap-year date of February 29, 2000,
which somehow got overlooked (don't ask). Check with your
network-hardware vendor. Some have fixes; many offer
trade-in deals (usually lowballed, though) for fairly recent
noncompliant products.
In PC software, it's a mixed bag. Even products as recent as
Microsoft's nearly ubiquitous Windows 95 and Office 97
have Y2K issues, though they may not affect you. You can
find patches for many of those problems at
www.microsoft.com. Windows 98 and the new Office 2000
suite and its components are said by Microsoft to be
Y2K-problem-free.
For any PC software package you rely on, check with the
vendor. PC software developers have, to be sure, put out
some pretty vague and unreliable statements over the past
year or so about their Y2K problems. But in the past six
months, there's been a great improvement in the quantity,
accuracy, and usefulness of vendor-provided
Y2K-compatibility information. Check the Web sites of your
key software's publishers.
For more structured information, and especially for
testing--find out what your vendors say, but don't trust
them without confirming their claims!--take a look at the
Norton 2000 product mentioned above. In both an
inexpensive personal version ($40 street) and a
not-too-expensive corporate version (about $25 per seat),
Norton 2000 is the best general- purpose Y2K testing
package I've seen. Much more specialized (and more
expensive) programs are available for corporate IT managers
as well.
Actually, I don't worry so much about Y2K compatibility
with recent software. I worry about you--and me. No matter
how much software vendors wring out their products,
shedding bad code, most of the problems we'll see will arise
from what we've done with those packages.
If you've routinely used two-digit year dates in your
spreadsheet's date-calculation formulas and functions, for
example, you may be in trouble. Most recent and all current
spreadsheet software I know will automatically expand year
dates for calculations if you've chosen to display them with
only two digits--but only if you've actually entered them as
four-digit years. Think about it: How else could they work?
Checking your own work can be daunting. How many
spreadsheets have you built, and how many do you still
use? How many of those have you passed on to others?
And how many have been passed on even farther in your
company, probably to people you have no idea use them?
What about databases you've constructed, or more likely,
into which you've entered date data?
How will you find that data and correct it as necessary?
Waiting until problems arise is not a very smart option. Do
you really want to go through every worksheet, cell by cell,
and every database record, looking for bad data?
I've spoken to well over a hundred audiences around the
country about Y2K issues over the past couple of years. I've
been astonished to find how few people in those audiences
had considered that they might be part of the Y2K problem,
through sloppy habits in building and using PC spreadsheet
and database programs.
And--True Confessions time--I'm as guilty as they are. Until
we devoted most of a week to running down specific date
entries in the data files in general use in my office, we had
some problems. Umm--make that a lot of problems. Almost
all of them caused by me, with my sloppy, lazy, two-digit
year date data-entry habits.
And I'm supposed to know about this stuff.
Next time, I'll set the computer-specific items aside and focus
on those larger societal issues I mentioned. This is
important stuff; stay tuned.
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