I have been reading a lot about how small businesses not addressing their Y2K compliancy problem could have an effect by corrupting systems in businesses that are compliant.

Does the same hold true for home PC's? Could home PC's that are not Y2K compliant corrupt compliant systems that they link to.

I have just read from a UK source that Microsoft has announced over there that Windows 95 most probably shall never be able to be made Y2K compliant. There must be thousands of homes across America alone that have PC's with pre-installed Windows 95 software. Like us I am sure that most of these home PC users don't have a clue about the internal workings of their PC's. We purchased our PC 3 years ago bending to PR pressure that every child should have access to a PC. PR, also to get PC's into the home was and still is that they are USER FRIENDLY. So you didn't need to be a rocket scientist to own and use a PC. Now it would seem that you do need to be a rocket scientist.

As a follow-up. We are aware that legislation is now being drawn up to protect companies that have made a 'good faith effort to become Y2K compliant'. Well we purchased a SONY PC three years ago. The SONY PC is Y2K compliant. So that means that SONY demonstrated a 'good faith effort in Y2K compliancy'. However, the Microsoft Windows 95 software that came pre-installed is not Y2K compliant. So by the same token I think it is fair to say that Microsoft did not demonstrate a good faith effort to produce and sell a Y2K compliant product.

I should have thought that all the legislation in the world now to protect companies from lawsuits is rather futile.

It might have been more prudent to have drawn up legislation a few years back requiring all PC manufacturers and software manufacturers to produce and sell Y2K compliant products. That would have just left the problem of either fixing existing systems with Y2K incompatability or replacing them with systems that are Y2K compliant.

It seems criminal to me to have let companies continue to flood the national and worldwide markets with products that had a known defect that will not enable them to function reliably beyond the Year 2000. Where on earth is the good business practice and ethics in that.

-- Carol Simpson (usa-uk@email.msn.com), January 24, 1999

Answers

yes to your question. also, governments COULD have established standards and made computer companies comply. they did not, so it's been the wild west in the industry.

if you want a good test of your PC's hardware and software, go to the Intelliquis website at http://www.intelliquis.com. they have FREE tests. do the hardware one first, as that's the most important. then the software test. then do yourself a favor and order their software and/or board if you need it. their stuff must be pretty good. they have a contract with the White House and federal agencies, and they don't need to advertise to get business. they also won an award at Fall Comdex.

our local PC users group (EPCUG) has been using the software since May of last year, and found it to be excellent and very reasonably priced compared to others. AND you get a free test before you buy.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), January 24, 1999.

There's only a threat if the home PC is used to process business data using software running on the home computer. For example, if you take copies of company data home of a floppy disk, or download them, work on them at home, then copy or upload them back to the company system.

Normal web usage doesn't usually count; any half-baked public- accessible internet system will do the important processing, complete with data validation, on the company's own computers. Of course, there will be failures, probably including not-half-baked systems that actually trust what comes back from (say) a Java applet downloaded to the customer machine ... anything is possible, but this won't be a big problem compared to everything else!

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 25, 1999.

ooops

-- ooops (ooops@ooops.ops), January 25, 1999.