Year 2000

 

 

Questions & Answers

Year 2000 home page Y2000 Summary Customer solutions Product compliance NSTL BIOS releases Service & Support Q&A

  1. Are Olivetti-branded PCs and associated software millennium-compliant?

    2. The products in Olivetti EuroComputers' current catalogue comply with the British Standards Institute (BSI) guidelines on Year 2000 certification for products sold in the UK, Microsoft PC 97 and PC 98 conformance guidelines, and the internationally-recognised National Software Testing Laboratory (NSTL) standard. This means that all our PCs currently on sale will continue to function without millennium-related problems on January 1st, 2000 and beyond.
     
     

  2. What is NSTL? What does NSTL certification prove?

    3. The National Software Testing Laboratory (NSTL), a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, is one of the leading independent testing facilities for the computer industry. NSTL's Year 2000 Hardware Compliance Program is an open industry standard to verify proper date handling by PC systems during the roll-over to the Year 2000. The Year 2000 Hardware Compliance Program provides end-users and system manufacturers with independent assurance that the PC hardware will correctly handle the transition to the third Millennium.  
     

  3. Many different programmes are available to test the millennium bug. Why do some produce different results?

     Different results may be produced by programs testing for millennium-related problems because these programs do not all test in the same way and do not test for the same information. In order to justify their price tags, various programs are testing isolated components even when these components never operate in isolation. As a result, PCs from some manufacturers may fail some of these tests, but they are not realistic tests of millennium compliance. All our PCs currently on sale will continue to function without millennium-related problems on January 1st, 2000 and beyond.
     
     
  4. Will older Olivetti-branded computers fail? Is there anything a user can do to make older computers millennium-safe?
Older Olivetti-branded computers fall into two main groups. First are those which are able to manage the correct date but are unable to manage the transition from 1999 to 2000 automatically. In this case the solution is to manually set the date right the first time the computer is switched on in the year 2000. This will permanently solve the problem. The second group of computers may require a BIOS upgrade to ensure compliance. These BIOS upgrades are freely available from our web site. Look on the Product compliance and Customer solutions pages for details. 

Unfortunately, there are some very old computers (produced in the early 1980s) that will not be able to handle the date in the new Millennium. The only solution in such a case will be to replace the computer.

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