<<How do I know that my current machine P-166 is Y2K ready?>>
Just because a manufacturer claims their new PCs are Y2K compliant does not mean it is. At work, we've had some of the latest PCs and they have failed the Y2K testing using industry benchmarks and testing software. We've had to spend resources to get them ready ourselves.
But here's what you can do:
You can go to the manufacturer's website (or at least the motherboard manufacturer's website) and find out if they have a Y2K compliance statement.
Again, this is just a lawyer statement that says to the effect, "as far as we legally know, the PC manufactured by us is Y2K compliant. If you lose data critical to your livelihood or business we are not liable. Yadda, yadda, yadda..." (Any IT Director who takes this statement at face value for Y2K readiness is either stupid or getting ready to find a new job.)
Another thing you can do is boot up your PC and before Windows comes up, there will be a whole bunch of text that flashes by indicating drivers and stuff.
Look for any refernce to the "bios" version and date. AMIBIOS,CBIOS, EASYBIOS, etc. Have this info ready when seeking info from PC, motherboard or even bios chip manufacturer. The bios is what determines whether your internal clock is looking at the date from a "two-digit" (non-Y2K compliant) or four-digit (Good, Y2K ready) point of view.
There are also programs available that can check the bios, OS and applications as well, like Norton 2000. Expect to pay for that. Maybe there are some sharewares out there as well.
Also check your operating system for Y2K compliance. Win95 is not Win NT 4.0 is not. ServicePack 3 for Win NT resolves this, but causes the computer to be unstable, crash and lose data. ServicePack 4 fixes this, but causes more problems. ServicePack 5 allegedly fixes 5he problems of 3 and 4.
I don't think Win98 is fully compliant either. I'd check.
This Y2K stuff is probably affecting sales across the board and is a corporate nightmare. On the PC side of things, my company has spent over $100K (not including time of all the employees involved). On the Mac side, we've spent about a thousand bucks for upgrades to Filemaker database to get it compliant.
For those of you folks out there who are ignoring the Mac thinking it's Y2K-proof, check your applications! The Mac is Y2K compliant with the clock accurate til year 3036 (so it is Y3K compliant as well). However, some of the applications which had the PC in mind are not compliant and use two-digit date systems. FileMaker, Quickmail, etc.
That's another thing. If you are using some heavy duty accounting/finance apps on your PC, you need to check the vendor's website for compliance as well.
-Bill_H |
