By now you've probably heard enough about Y2K to make you think seriously about stocking up on canned goods. The bug, which prevents computers from understanding 21st-century dates, could bring down major computer systems all over the world if left unrectified.
However, if you believe that is all that the Y2K bug can bring down, you may have a very nasty surprise when you go to check your e-mail on New Year's Day. It's not just big mainframes that can fall prey to the millennium bug, your desktop PC is very much at risk.
With this in mind Symantec, the company which makes Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus, came up with Norton 2000. Norton 2000 can scan for non-Y2K-compliant programs, hardware and files and help you to stay out of harm's way on January 1.
Norton 2000 installs the application itself, a Bios fix and then, rather like the annoying adverts that now appear in theatres before the start of a movie, Norton 2000 suggests you install a 30-day trial version of Norton AntiVirus since a virus can also make your computer do funny things, or at least so, the explanation seems to go.
With the software installed, Norton 2000 made a detailed scan of my system - and I mean a good 30 minutes worth of detailed poking and prodding.
It checks files, some basic Windows settings and performs a rollover test, setting the internal clock to various dates beyond January 1 to make sure the machine continues to run. The epic 30-minute scan is for non-compliant applications. Norton basically searches your disk for every application component installed and checks them against a database of non-compliant software.
The database is updatable so you can make sure you are always getting the latest info. At the end of the test, you are given three gargantuan reports which tell you about the compliance of your hardware, applications and files and what can be done about them.