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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
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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.

By Jim Seymour August 5, 1999

As promised last time, let's look at the noncomputer side of Y2K: the steps you should consider taking to prepare for any possible interruptions or dislocations a few months from now. Wait much longer and you'll be limiting your options. (Next

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