September 1998
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Technology Series
The New Millennium & Y2K Problem
By John Campion
The coming of the new millennium offers many new opportunities as well as potential computer problems. Because of the date change from '99 to '00 on December 31, 1999, many computers and/or software may experience problems or complete failure. The ACC has been working on this problem for the past few years. We have generally completed our work on the ACC central computing systems and are now shifting into high gear on the desktop computer issues.
Because St. Olaf has maintained relatively strict hardware standards, we have minimized the problems associated with multiple computer platforms. All Gateway PC's with the pentium chip and all Macintosh computers are Y2K (Year Two Thousand) compliant, meaning the vendor has verified that the equipment has been tested and should not experience problems when we begin to use the year '00. Some older PC's, however, may be a problem. We are working to identify those machines, replacing them as needed.
We are currently compiling a list of software used at St. Olaf and are working to verify that it is Y2K compliant. Software is a more difficult issue because there are so many different packages on campus. The standard ACC-supported software will be compliant. The difficulty is with non-standard software you or your department may use. For this reason, we will be contacting departments and offices to get a list of specialty software (with version numbers) in use on campus, and we will attempt to contact the software companies to see if the software is Y2K compliant.
If you have questions about a particular software package and Y2K compliance, please e-mail campion. I will e-mail you the results of our search for software compliance information and will send a URL for a web site containing more information about your particular software package.