Net Gains: Apr 16, 1999 - one of Lyndon Cerejo's published articles

If you were planning the millennium baby, you've just about missed the boat - couples worldwide went into specially timed honeymoon moods earlier this month to time the delivery of their babies-to-be for the first day of the next century. But you've still got enough time left to ensure that the other effects that go hand in hand with the Jan 1, 2000 don't catch you off guard. That's right, we're talking Y2K here.

You're probably tired of seeing Y2K splashed all over the place - in the papers, on television and even on the Internet. An easy escape route a lot of people use to get away from all this Y2K hungama is to turn to H2K (a fermented drink). And just because governments worldwide are doing their level best to prevent potential disaster does not mean that you won't face some of the effects of the millennium bug. Chances are you'll have to tackle the Y2K bug on a personal level - take your PC for example. If your home PC is over a year old, Y2K could affect you in another eight months time.

Here's where the Internet comes to your rescue - it is a wonderful source, not only of information, but also has dozens of software programs freely available for download for you to test your computer. Don't be under the impression that your PC is Y2K compliant if your computer clock moves smoothly to the next century when tested - there are internal hardware tests that your computer may fail. That was exactly what I discovered when I tried a couple of freeware programs from the Internet to test my computer - my 2 year old faithful Pentium 100 was not Y2K compliant! PC Magazine has a neat collection of software programs to test your PC, while ZD Net has a tool that you can quickly download fast, free and when you've tested, you can see the how others who tested fared. You'd be surprised to know that almost 16% of the 67,500 PCs tested were not Y2K compliant!

While that was the bad news, the good news was that there are programs available on the Internet to fix these problems - for a fee of course! Instead of fixing my existing hardware, I chose to go in for a long due upgrade - and motherboards and computers available today all have the Y2K compliant certification, so you're safe. This all sounds frightening, but there's no need for you to get paranoid and treat this as the end of the world as we know it, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Many Indian websites have created special sections to inform and educate their surfers about the Y2K bug, while others use the hype generated to hawk their solutions. However, once you're comfortably sitting on the other side of the fence, you may want to download funny Y2K testers available on the Net to tease and worry your friends. There's one that depicts a giant bug coming out of the computer and eating up the user, while another actually runs a series of serious looking tests before coming up with a unique Y2K solution - it changes all Y's to K's. So the days of the week become Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak…. and you're left reading Lkndon Cerejo in the Bombak Times, this Fridak!

But seriously though, if you'd like to catch up on your Y2K fundaes and get hold of some reading material on the Y2K problem, follow links to free diagnostic software downloads to test your PC, or to catch a smile or two from Y2K humour, start clicking below:

	Net Gains (Apr 16, 99)
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