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Y2K

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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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