Hi everybody, I've been lurking here for a long time and never really felt the need to post before but I underwent a rather unsettling event today...I am a partner in a small business (35 employees) and I am responsible for most of our financial and office related decisions (CFO) we just put a new system online in July so I wasn't too concerned about being compliant but I had our computers checked out today. Aside from a few patches in the Microsoft products we passed with flying colors but get this...The gentleman who came out to check us out said that in our valley of somewhere around 100,000 people and a whole bunch of small businesses very few people were even getting their systems checked out. He said that when they heard he was charging 500.00 to check and fix (5 computers for us) most of them told him that there was no way they were spending that kind of money on it. I couldn't believe it!!! One other thing I'll share while I'm here...we have a contract with our local utility company and when we ordered our generators one of the really big bosses asked us to get him one too...hmmm, what does that tell you?

-- Mother Hen (GI@gi.com), January 19, 1999

Answers

Welcome Mother Hen. Hope you continue to post.

What you have reported reinforces what most of us here know to be true. Personal accounts of this sort are terribly important in convincing DGI's of the reality taking place every day. For every "success story" the media reports, there are probably thousands of stories like yours which don't get attention.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), January 20, 1999.

I'll throw my .02 in here as well. The company I own has been gearing up to do some very basic PC Y2K service offerings. We're ofering to do the basic BIOS checking, etc. We're not trying to sell hardware or software. Just check out the PC's and tell the folks what should work and what won't and how it can be fixed.

So we put together a market survey to find what kind of pricing model the market would bear. We made approx. 100 phone calls to various sized companys, 25 employees to 1,000, to get some data to work with. Were we suprised! Yes many companys know about Y2K, yes they are "getting around to it", yes they would pay for the service, BUT most of the respondants were not going to take any action until this summer! We asked why wait? Reason? Many felt that they could upgrade their hardware/software at once and by the summer they would have a better "feel" as to how the economy would be doing.

I can understand their viewpoint and therein lies the problem. Many of us in the "know"(read computer type geeks) understand that when you roll out new hardware and new software at the same time you will get hit with Murphys Law. It will add to your roll out time table, can result in data integrity problems, etc. As to their viewpoint I can understand any business that thinks that it is their best interests to watch the economy. I do it, it's just smart business management. But in this instance the companys that we talked with felt that they could wait to do their Y2K checking. However if they wait too long then there "may" be a shortage of people to do the upgrades, etc. Those of us that do that for a living may be either up to ears in work or there may be hardware/software shortages by then. I'm only guessing.

So yes business people are aware, yes they do have plans, and yes money to do it is being held onto for now.

As a side note, during one conversation with a CIO she asked me what my company was doing. I told her we had upgraded all of our hardware and software late last year. She then asked me what "personal" strategies I was pursuing since I was tied so closely to the computer industry!! Her comment was that she had decided to make some "plans" herself and her family, "you know, just to be on the safe side." Yes people are paying attention.(Now I just gotta get my bank to 'fess up on where they are at!!) :)

just my .02 worth

Computer Dude

-- Computer Geek (geek@hotmail.com), January 20, 1999.

Hi everyone,

I work at a small community college. Last fall our director of computing had some folks from Digital Equipment Co.(DEC) come and work on our VAXs to make them compliant. I was not privy to all the details but the director told me that they used some software to find all the date-related code. Cool, right? They were here several days and fixed and tested. However...when it came time to use the programs during actual registration, guess what? It didn't work right and the director was up here several nights trying to fix the bugs.

After she told me this I said "kind of gives you a feel for what is going to happen on a larger scale". She just kind of went "wide-eyed and speechless".

I feel a real sense of urgency to get things in order. Thanks to everyone who posts on this forum. The information and support helps tremendously.

-- Sharon in Texas (Sking@drought-ridden.com), January 20, 1999.