Microsoft is launching a massive effort to remind customers that Year 2000 (Y2K) compliance testing shouldn't wait until the end of the year. The company plans to contact about 60 million customers to raise awareness of Y2K problems. The effort involves email and direct mail and is described as the largest consumer campaign in history. Microsoft is contacting both business and home users. The company sent email messages to more than 1 million customers in July, and will send postcards to 60 million customers between August and November. The message urges PC users to visit the Microsoft Y2K Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/y2k/). The site displays links aimed at two Microsoft communities: the TechNet Y2K portal for IT professionals and the consumer Y2K portal for home PC users. In a related story, the President's Council on the Year 2000 (Y2K) Conversion, reported that fewer than one-third of schools and universities meet Y2K compliance standards for hardware and software. The council also cited local governments for lagging in efforts to update computer systems. The document reports that a substantial number of education institutions haven't even completed their assessment of systems, and are therefore lagging in remediation and testing. Regarding local governments, the report cited concerns about emergency call systems (911 in most US cities). As of June, only 37 percent of the emergency dispatch systems in the United States had completed Y2K changeovers
