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The Year 2000 problem, also known as the millennium bug or simply as Y2K, is today's most hyped technology issue. For good reason, however, because it's a little glitch with profound, expensive and ugly consequences. It affects most computers in use today, from your clients' mainframes to the desktop at home.
Y2K should interest people like you, those who use computers for personal finance programs, accounting programs, spreadsheets or other important applications that make calculations based on times and dates. If your computer is used for games, wordprocessing, e-mail, etc., you may consider Y2K an annoyance.
The Y2K Problem And What it May Do to Your PC
Here's how Y2K works: When the calendar hits midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, the next tick of the real time clock built into almost every PC will advance the year from 99 to 00 because years ago programmers decided to render years as two digits. These clocks are typically soldered onto the motherboard and backed up by a battery, and keep ticking whether the computer is on or off.
Another part of the computer, the BIOS, has among its tasks assigning a century to the two-digit year number. Most PCs - all...