Thanks for the support.
I do not get frustrated with the PC upgrade cycle, because it is technology driven, not marketing driven like cars. If I feel pressure to buy a new CPU, I know I am getting something that did not, and could not have, existed when I bought the previous CPU. This is big time way different from feeling compelled to buy a new car because some guy in Detroit deceided that this year's model should have tail fins.
I agree with Paul on Alpha, I don't think that DEC's efforts will make much difference. Although Alpha is still perhaps faster, there is not a critical difference between a P II/300 and an Alpha, except in price and in what OTHER applications you can run.
I don't think that there are any govt. moratoriums on purchases due to y2K, except overall budget constraints. It's amazing how many companies really have not done much on the Y2K problem. By the way, there are no microprocessor dependencies here as far as PC's are concerned -- however some older PC's (rom bios), and some versions of various operating systems, do have problems. Companies do not have as much time as they think -- things are going to start failing in just over a year. If you don't think so, consider that if your bank gave you a credit card with an expiration date past 1999, it would be rejected as "expired" in a significant number (maybe a majority) of transactions. They have to be issuing such credit cards by January of 1999, and such cards will not work universally until EVERY Bank, every credit card authorization terminal, every ATM and every transaction processing network has become Y2K compliant. And believe me, some of these entities have not even STARTED actual coding -- they are still "reviewing the nature of the problem".
Just one example, but it's almost ALL sofware/firmware. However, there are a significant number of cases in which the "fix" is going to involve a new PC (for system in which the ROM bios is not compliant). |
