Peter Norton is a household name when it
comes to utilities and fixes for your PC. Small wonder then, that he brings to you
what’s billed as the best way to prepare your PC and data for the Year 2000. Limited
to PCs running Win 95/98 and NT, the CD is self-installing with little or no user input
required. The start screen offers you the choice to scan your applications and data using
a window with traffic-light indicators and VCR-type buttons.
You can either perform all the
operations–system date checks, data files checks, etc–manually, or through a
wizard.
The system date test detects problems in
the BIOS with reference to the change of the century. If a problem is detected, it alerts
you, and the BIOS-Fix program lets you rectify the error. The program checks the rollover
to January 1, 2000, making sure that 2000 appears as a leap year, and 2004 again is shown
as a leap year. The BIOS Fix is memory resident and writes the relevant line into the
config.sys file so that it activates on boot-up. In fact, you can prepare a boot-up disk
to check the system from a cold boot, so that problems can be identified.
Norton 2000
Software for Y2k compliance. Rs
1,039
Features:
Features: Installs RTC fix; supports
system date test, application scan, data file scan; generates detailed reports.
Pros:
Easy to install and use; Webupdates available regularly. Easy to install and use; Web
updates available regularly.
Cons:
Available for Windows only. Available for Windows only.
Source:
Godrej Pacific Technology Plant19a, Pirojshanagar, Vikhroli (W), Mumbai 400079. Tel: 22-5171166/5171177 Fax: 5170415 Godrej Pacific Technology Plant
19a, Pirojshanagar, Vikhroli (W), Mumbai 400079. Tel: 22-5171166/5171177 Fax: 5170415
The application scan identifies
applications on your hard drive with known Y2k problems and generates a report. It gives
links to the sites where you can read more about it, or download the fixes. It also gives
you a list of software that are not Y2k compliant, and a set of applications that their
makers have pronounced compliant.
The data file scan scans your drive for
files with date fields or entries that might cause problems. There are various levels of
color-coded severity mentioned. Where possible, a sample of the data is also listed. It
also detects the affected Visual Basic modules.
It then generates a report that can also be
printed. One extra reporting feature that’s quite indispensable is the color-coded
spreadsheet. It colors the cells in your affected spreadsheet according to their severity
level. Rolling the mouse over a colored cell pops up a box with the annotations for that
problem. One can also do a selective scan for data files by modifying the settings in the
menu.
The Live Update feature allows you to
regularly update the software from Norton’s knowledge base of applications and
program updates on the Web. This helps to keep your program up-to-date and usable.