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From...

Testing firm claims Compaq PCs are not Y2K-compliant

Year 2000 graphic

June 2, 1998
Web posted at: 4:30 p.m. EDT

by Kristi Essick

(IDG) -- A British software company that supplies fix-it tools for the year 2000 problem has reported Compaq Computer to the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority, alleging that the PC manufacturer made false claims about the year 2000 compliancy of its machines.

Prove It 2000 made the official complaint in relation to a May 14 Compaq newspaper advertisement that urged people to ditch existing PCs in favor of new Compaq machines, which Compaq said had passed multiple year 2000 compliancy tests.

Prove It has tested the Compaq PCs advertised and found them not to be fully compliant, the U.K. company said in a statement. Most importantly, the PCs don't pass year 2000 tests for internal Real Time Clock functions, Prove It said.

Real Time Clocks allow PCs to communicate time- and date-related functions to software systems--an essential function needed for PCs to cope with the year 2000 problem, Prove It said.

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The year 2000 problem occurs because many computer systems read dates as two digits (where 89 would be 1989, for example). This could cause machines to crash and malfunction when trying to read 00, which could be either 1900 or 2000.

Compaq vehemently disagrees with Prove It's accusations, however, saying that the Real Time Clock is not an important element in year 2000 compliancy. Compaq is working with NSTL testing agency, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies, to ensure that all of its current and forthcoming PCs are year 2000 compliant, the company said in a statement.

Compaq claims that applications that rely solely on the Real Time Clock and bypass the operating system and ROM BIOS are few and far between. Those that do usually have logic written into them to rectify any incorrect dates, Compaq said. Applications that don't contain this logic "violate basic programming principles" and aren't considered industry standards that should be supported, Compaq added.

Prove It refutes Compaq's claims that the Real Time Clock is not important for year 2000 conformity, pointing out that even Windows NT uses the Real Time Clock in order to function. The U.K. company says that Compaq should adhere to more stringent testing procedures. Compaq claims that the NSTL testing program is widely supported by the likes of Dell and Packard Bell.

Prove It admits that a problem exists in defining just exactly what it means to be year 2000 compliant. But it objects to how the Compaq ads claimed that its PCs were compliant, while other manufacturers' machines were not, said David Rydell, a Prove It spokesman.

The Advertising Standards Authority is currently investigating Prove It's claim against Compaq and is also looking into whether Compaq used unfair "scaremongering" to promote its PCs to the detriment of other manufacturers, Rydell said. Prove It is hoping its stand against Compaq will raise the issue of the Real Time Clock to the public and force Compaq to rescind its claims that its PCs are up to speed.

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