I'm no economist but I enjoy the subject immensely...my question is how much of our very robust economy at the present time is being driven by all of this spending on y2k fixes? In my thinking it must be quite alot since there is an unprecedented amount of replacement and purchase of new systems of computer hardware, software etc... Our economy has NEVER performed this well...could this year be the peak of such good performance? I have a difficult time believing all industries are even able to replace so many systems in such a short amount of time...how could there even be enough supply to that? We are talking about 30-40 yrs of old equipment out there...how many mainframes and mini computers are out there sitting on the shelves ready to be sold for y2k remediation that most denied even needing up until just a few short months ago... shouldn't we be hearing of shortages of such products? I believe the economic impact of y2k will be very disastrous even if the power is not down for a long period... and even if the food supply "somehow" is able to limp along..

John A

-- gotitlongago@garynorth. (vacajohn@(nospam)jccomp.com), March 10, 1999

Answers

Hi John. I'm no economist myself, but can give you an answer as far as mainframe hardware. The IBM line has been hardware/operating system compliant for at least a few years now. Many companies have updated their hardware by attriction, cost savings, lack of spare parts for older hardware, etc. However, simply bringing in new hardware doesn't solve the Y2K problem. The vast majority of software is user written. When you move these programs to the new hardware, you also move all the Y2K problems. You must still dig in, find, fix and test those programs that have a date problem. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 10, 1999.