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You know how important they say it is to be a well-rounded person? The iBook was designedto be a well-rounded notebook computer. Smoothly rounded edges that fit the curve of your hands, pleasing textures, a brilliant 12.1-inch high-resolution active-matrix display, and a convenient carrying handle that folds away out of sight are among the many thoughtful touches you'll appreciate about the iBook. And with a 56K modem, a 10/100BASE-T Ethernet port, Mac OS 8.6 and all the right software already installed, it's as Internet-ready as a notebook computer can be.

The Beauty and the Beast But while you'll love the way the iBook looks and feels and connects to the Internet, you'll learn to respect the beast within. Because the iBook is powered by a blazingly fast 300MHz PowerPC G3 processor-great for surfing the Internet, whipping out homework assignments, sending and receiving email, or beating the daylights out of friends at multiplayer games. The iBook is made for computing on the move: it comes fully-loaded with a lithium-ion battery that runs up to six houts between charges. The iBook has a tough polycarbonate body built to withstand life in a backpack-and no doors or latches to break.

Overview of Problem Studies to define the scope of the Y2K problem and the costs to fix it have produced widely varying results, causing confusion and concern. The problem has caught the media's attention and the public's imagination, and it has stimulated aggressive vendor response. Almost all computer-based systems will be adversely affected by the arrival of the Year 2000 (01/01/2000), unless action is taken now to replace, update, or change components of these systems to eliminate or otherwise mitigate the effects of this event. Fixing and testing the problem poses a significant problem for system and particularly software maintenance. For whatever reason-whether they wanted to save precious memory in an era when memory was incredibly expensive, or because they didn’t expect systems to last this long, or because they simply didn’t recognize the problem-programmers long ago adopted a two-digit convention to represent the year. This convention will cause failures as we approach the turn of the century and beyond. The problem has precedent: Few realized that the IBM 360 could not handle dates past 31 December 1969 until 360s all over Europe started failing at midnight local time. As the failures progressed around the globe, following the timezones, IBM identified the problem and was able to provide its American and Asian customers with a temporary fix by telling them to lie to their computers about the date. Meanwhile, IBM proceeded to create a longer-term patch for the problem. Unfortunately, the problem is not isolated to programming errors caused by the use of the two-digit year coding scheme. The year 2000 presents a "triple witching hour" of potential traps for designers and coders. In addition to the two-digit year coding, there are distinct issues surrounding the use of the six-digit date representation, and still other risks caused by the calculation of the leap year. And just to make matters worse, January 1, 2000 falls on a Saturday. Problems caused by coding errors may not be discovered until the next regular working day, allowing enough time for the errors to inflict a great deal of damage.