Does the Y2K problem affect PC systems?
Research by Greenwich Mean Time suggests that most PCs bought before 1997, and 47 per cent bought after that date, could have problems. Their testing of PC programs and hardware included testing of the Basic input/output System (BIOS) on more than 500 types of PCs. 93% of the machines made before 1997 failed a BIOS test. They tested 4,000 software packages, 64 per cent had date-dependent features that could cause them to produce erroneous results. Only 28.2% of the packaged PC software tested claimed to be Year 2000 compliant. Of them 4.4% didn’t know that 2000 is a leap year, 3.5% only worked in the 20th century and 11.5% stored dates different from the user input. PC software and hardware problems could affect many enterprises. From a technical standpoint, Y2K related date errors are easily controlled in PCs. Making the hardware compliant can often be done by inexpensive software BIOS upgrades. The problem is in the numbers of units involved. There are an estimated 80,000,000 PCs cur
