1. "EDITORS CORNER" 
* WELCOME TO NEW READERS: FREE NT PERFORMANCE BOOSTER TOOL
* THIS TIME OUR SPONSOR IS MICROSOFT

2. "TECH BRIEFING"
* SAFEGUARDING YOUR DATA: WHAT STRATEGIES TO USE?
* SO WHAT THE HECK IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SAN AND NAS?
* DEFINED: MESSAGE QUEUEING
* W2K: HOW DO I MIGRATE TO THOSE NEW NAMING CONVENTIONS? 

3. "NT RELATED NEWS" 
* WHAT IS MICROSOFT RESEARCH UP TO?
* YOU -HAVE- TO INSTALL SP4 TO BE Y2K COMPLIANT
* NT CONSUMER VERSION: STILL 2-3 YEARS OFF?

4. "NT THIRD PARTY NEWS"
* NEW: PRODUCT 'BOS' IS ALTERNATIVE FOR TAPE BACKUP
* STORAGE RESOURCE MANAGER 3.01 EE SHIPPING
* RECOVERNT 3.0 UNDELETES VIA THE INTERNET

5. "HINTS AND TIPS - TIME SAVERS AND OTHER GOODIES...
6. "THE NT STOCK WATCH"
7. "Y2K WATCH" - GOOD NEWS!
8. "HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST"
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off or change your address.

****************WHAT IS NTOOLS E-NEWS?******************************
Sunbelt Windows NTools E-News is the World's first and largest 
E-Newsletter designed for NT System Managers that have the job to 
get and keep NT up & running in a production environment. Sunbelt 
launched this electronic newsletter early 1996. Every two weeks we
keep the Windows NT community informed and aware of new developments
of NT and 3-rd party NT System Management Tools. You get hints and
tips that will enable you to better utilize and understand Windows NT, 
now renamed to Windows 2000 (W2K and pronounced Win-two-K).

You'll find general Windows NT related and third party news, tech
information, and 3-rd party beta and release information. As a
subscriber to NTools E-News[tm], you will receive instant notifi-
cation of important NT related events and you are also a charter 
member of the Sunbelt Field Test Bonus Program. Sunbelt Software is 
the first and largest distributor worldwide of Third Party System
Management Tools for Windows NT with 6 subsidiaries in the US and 
Europe.

*************THIS TIME OUR SPONSOR IS MICROSOFT*******************

Attend a FREE MICROSOFT TECHNET event in your area and get the 
in-depth, how-to information on deploying, managing, supporting, 
and optimizing your Microsoft products. Designed specifically for 
IT Professionals and Developers, the TechNet events are presented 
by Microsoft Technology Specialists who understand the crucial issues 
of the IT world. Visit our website today to find an event near you. 
When registering, enter VIP code "sunbelt."
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/promo/events2.htm
*******************************************************************


1. "EDITORS CORNER" 

Hi NT-ers,


If this is your first NTools E-News, welcome! You are in the good
company of 180,000 colleagues that are kept up to date about NT
(W2K) every two weeks. Treat this issue as a sample, you can unsub
in 5 seconds but the stuff in here (people tell us) is pretty useful.

As a subscriber to NTools E-News you are eligible for your FREE 
copy of AutoPilot for NT Workstation. AutoPilot is a neural network
that boosts performance of busy NT systems. Its heritage is the 
supercomputer field and it works especially well on multiprocessor
boxes. You are allowed to use ONE WORKSTATION copy for free for 
yourself. Download: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/techedown.htm

This issue Microsoft is our sponsor. Since subscribers are all
involved with NT in depth, you are invited to a free TECHNET event
in your area. See the sponsor message above.

We have a lot of interesting news again, let's have a look!?

Warm regards,


Stu Sjouwerman


********************************************************************
2. "TECH BRIEFING"

* SAFEGUARDING YOUR DATA: WHAT STRATEGIES TO USE?

NT does not provide an enterprise backup utility. That means 
you are depending on third party tools to get it done. Backing up 
is a major headache. Here are the biggest problems connected with 
Backup and I'm sure you will recognize them:

1) Increased traffic over the network
2) Backup takes too much time/is too slow
3) Too much downtime connected with backup
4) Reliability of the backup system itself, and
5) Insufficient backup storage capacity

With data exploding as it is, this is only going to get worse. You 
are responsible for systems being up, and data being available. The 
news you positively HATE to give is that a file requested for restore
for some reason did not make it on your recent backup tape. Usually 
because the file was left open overnight and was skipped by the backup 
software. Aaugh!!

More over, the files that are left open overnight are the ones the
users are really working on and if _those_ don't get backed up and
get lost you're really up $#!+ creek without a paddle. . .

OK, what are the strategies to make SURE you have your users' NT 
data available at all times? Generally there are three categories 
of importance. First define what data is 'mission cirital', second
what is 'important/normal', and which files are for 'archiving'. 
You could split it out further but don't make your life more 
difficult than needed. 3 categories of importance usually does it.

Once you have all your files in one of those three categories, 
then you define where it sits: Server or Workstation. That will
give you 6 different combinations of data & where it resides.
We'll pick these 6 items up one by one and we'll give some ideas
how you can have a robust backup strategy. (Warning, I'm keeping
it simple here. Just 'think' with the data and apply it in your
own environment in a way that makes sense.)

SERVER: MISSION CRITICAL

Obviously you need tools here that keep the data available in
case the server crashes. There are two kinds of solutions. One
is clustering, the other category is the kind of tool that mirrors
data real-time from a source server to a target. When the source
server crashes it fails over to the target. You can buy NT Enter-
prise Edition and use Microsoft Cluster Server at about $4,000
per machine to cluster boxes. There is a cheaper alternative
though that does it a little different.

What has been an incredibly popular solution is the mirror/fail
over architecture. The new Market Leader for this type of setup
is Double-Take. http://www.sunbelt-software.com/dtake.htm
Your mission critical data now sits on two machines with each
it's separate drives. Sigh of relief! You have moved your mission 
critical data to a 'High Availability' configuration. You can also
use Double-Take to get the data off-site for disaster recovery.
Now, how to back up the target server?

SERVER: IMPORTANT

Data that sits on a server and is deemed important (but is not
mirrored in real time) needs still to be backed up. This gets to
be quite a bit of files normally and is more Gigabytes than the 
mission critical stuff. Here is where third party utilities come 
in. The market leaders are Seagate's Backup Exec, and CA's ARC-
ServeIT. Sunbelt carries UltraBac because it's faster than both. 
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ultrabac.htm

But here is also where the headaches start because of the sheer
volume of the data. Having to back up 20 or 50 or 200 Gigs of
data is a problem. Some outfits simply have stopped making their
Tape Backups because it gets impossible. Throwing more disk space
at it gets to be a more and more atttractive solution. Disk to 
Disk backup has a series of very interesting advantages. Sunbelt 
introduces a tool that has been developed just for that later in 
this news letter: BOS. http://www.sunbelt-software.com/bos.htm

SERVER: ARCHIVING

This is stuff that is OK to back up overnight and have available
on a tape that you can find back somewhere. There are quite 
sophisticated Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solutions on 
the market and W2K will have a simple one built in. Having to
keep track of what data is on which tape is a hassle though. 
Veritas is one of the big ones that has software to manage tape
libraries but there are many more. Storage Resource Manager is
good to determine the age of all the files. Check out: 
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/highsrm.htm


WORKST: MISSION CRITICAL

Well, here you have the old predicament. Do you leave that kind
of data on the workstation or do you force it to be on the server
via a home-directory? The latter is usually done so that you do
not have to back up any workstations at all. Unfortunately this
lofty goal often gets scuttled by the users leaving their files
open on the workstation. But also they sometimes save it to their
own hard disk and it sits hidden in the Profile. Then they delete
it and a copy never made it to the server in the first place. Next
YOU get called to find that deleted file back, help! Use a third
party tool that is able to undelete files (even over your LAN)
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/recovernt.htm

OK, the way we have solved this in Sunbelt is as follows: Server
related files like SQL sales databases are obviously on the server
and get backed up on the server side. We have also given each user
a MISCTEXT directory and if they want stuff to be backed up, they
need to save it in there. We have backup scripts pulling it off
the workstation every night. For files that are left open, we use
a utility called Fortress-NT that forces a log-off of idle users,
and that automatically closes the files as well.
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/fortress.htm


WORKST: IMPORTANT

Home directories are definitely the way to go. That will make sure
the data gets backed up. You might also want to make a backup of
files that accidentally get plugged in the "personal" section of
the profile. Profiles get regularly wiped out together with all 
the user files that sit there. Those were not backup up, and people
need RecoverNT to get the deleted files back.


WORKST: ARCHIVING

A tool to find out what the last time of access of a file was is
crucial to determine what files can be pulled of to tape. It's a 
matter of picking the one that fits your environment best. 

Conclusion: It is crucial to implement your own rock-solid strategy 
using a robust variety of tools and methods to make sure that the 
data is available when users need it. Use best-of-breed utilities
and industry 'best-practise' to get the job done.
------------------------------

* SO WHAT THE HECK IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SAN AND NAS?

New computing models like the Internet, Intranets, e-commerce and
data warehousing are forecast to approach one million Terabytes
by 2001 up from 72,000 in 1997. That is an increase of 1,225%(!)
The amount of data explodes and we need to find better ways to
manage, analyze and act upon that information.

A relatively new solution is called a SAN (Storage Area Network).
It's an ARCHITECTURE that has been developed in the mainframe area and
now is used for Unix and NT. It's dedicated subnetworks connecting 
servers and storage. The storage resources are directly accessible by 
any number of servers using high-speed interconnect technology that 
is integrated into the hubs, routers and switches. Hardware people 
like Sun, IBM, HP, Compac, EMC, Data General, 3Com are already 
offering the boxes and cards able to do this. In short, the DISKS 
are pulled OUT of the servers.

Another very similar new concept is the NAS that is evolving in
parallel. This is Network Attached Storage. It's another technology
all together but it sounds very similar so it's confusing. What is NAS?
NAS devices are a type of external storage systems. A NAS is a "thin"
server with one goal: shared file service. They offload CPU cycles 
from the server for simple tasks suchs as file/print. You plug a NAS
in the LAN and: "Voila! Suddenly another 10Gig available".

To remember easily: SAN=Architecture, but NAS=Device. 

In the next newsletter we will discuss SANs in much greater detail,
this is an important development we all need to know more about.
-----------------------------

* DEFINED: MESSAGE QUEUEING

Microsoft has their MSMQ product out for a while. It's called a 
middleware product. What does it actually do? Well, imagine you are
a system admin and responsible for the e-commerce server of your
company. Separate machines for the page servers and the back-end
databases. Products are selected from the databases via ODBC
connections. Suppose you need to take the product database off-
line to swap out a RAID set. 

Without a message queue that would mean downtime for the whole
e-commerce configuration. MSMQ allows you to keep the apps online
while you do the necessary system maintenance. MSWQ hides the
complexity in interprocess communications between systems over
multiple protocols. Basically, MSMQ allows you to increase the
robustness of a distributed application. There is a good article 
about it in Windows NT Magazine Feb 1999.
-----------------------------

* W2K: HOW DO I MIGRATE TO THOSE NEW NAMING CONVENTIONS? 

As many of you know, part of the goal of NTools E-News is to help 
inform all of you about the upcoming W2K upgrade. As the year rolls 
on, I'll try my best to help you prepare your networks for W2K. 
During the past few months I have been doing a lot of my own research 
on Active Directory Services, and the x.500 standard. One of the most 
critical aspects of ADS is creating your corporate naming conventions, 
which will not be as simple a task as it sounds. 

Fortunately there are some NT tools out there that can let you start 
creating and enforcing your corporate naming conventions in your current 
NT environments... The developer of Trusted Enterprise Manager has just
put out a Windows 2000 Migration White Paper. This paper not only 
details how TEM can help you start prepping for W2K, but it also contains 
some great information from Microsoft on ADS. Good (FREE) stuff! 
Download here: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/tem.htm

********************************************************************

3. "NT RELATED NEWS" 

* WHAT IS MICROSOFT RESEARCH UP TO?

Building 31 on the Redmond Campus is Microsoft Research Lab. It was
created in 1991, and meant to be filled with the best and brightest
computer wizards. And a swarm of legends in the computing community
now walks in Building 31. It's actually 300 of them and that number
will double in the next year.

What have they done in the last 7 years? Part of it is so called
"Blue-Sky Research". Meaning theoretical research not with an imme-
diate product in mind. But BillG's idea is that the fact they are 
right in the middle of the commercial buildings will keep them 
reminded about the ultimate goal of their research: shipping stuff.

By establishing the lab, MS has signaled it's intent to be a player
in the Big League (IBM, Xerox). Technologies like voice recognition, 
3D graphics and future user interfaces are the kind of things they 
are working on.

Some very interesting progress is already made. The spelling and
grammar checker in MS-WORD is built in-house by these researchers.
It's the basis for an advanced speech recognition interface in NT
in the years to come.

MS is committed to develop in-house (as opposed to acquire) technology
that will let us talk to NT in normal everyday language such as...
You: "Again a newsletter from Stu? Trash it!" 
NT: "Yes Master".

MS has 20 people working on its Natural Language Processing (NLP) group.
The other part is the idea that machines should be able to respond to
facial expressions and gestures. 
You: "Again a newsletter from Stu?" You turn your thumb down.
NT: "That was deleted Master" 

Well, I can only hope it will take them a while to get all that stuff
working  But seriously, this kind of technology is pretty cool.
It's early days though and it will take years more work to get it into
a really practical use. But interesting to know where we're going!
-----------------------------

* YOU -HAVE- TO INSTALL SP4 TO BE Y2K COMPLIANT

If you have been reluctant to deploy SP4, better start planning. 
Your systems will not be completely Y2K-compliant without it. MS now 
recommends implementing SP4 to get Y2K-compliant. This is opposed to 
their previous position that SP3 would do the job. (however leaving 
small Y2K issues). 

Deploying SP4 which includes over 650 bug fixes, repairs 28 memory leaks 
and includes all the patches from earliers SP's is not to be sneezed at.

Obviously all the analysts and yours truly recommend that you spend some 
months testing, evaluating, and then deploy SP4. This BIIIG service pack,
coupled with the approaching year 2000, has left some people nervous 
though.

Mark Light (the MS Y2K product manager) said that SP3, even with all 
of the post SP3 hotfixes, would not get you the Y2K compliance you would
have when you install SP4. They will release a document about SP3 and its 
Y2K-issues this month. 

MS claims it will maintain SP4 at "Y2K-compliant" status. That means they
will continue to issue HotFixes if more Y2K-bugs are discovered. They 
also assure us that if we upgrade to SP4 we will not have to implement
yet another service pack by the end of the year. Despite the fact you 
may be leery to start with SP4, I have not seen any major problems with
it and STRONGLY suggest you get it implemented in your outfit. We have 
gone to SP4 with all our machines in Sunbelt, Webservers, SQL servers,
APP servers and all NT workstations (we have no W95/98 machines) and
have seen no problems in our small environment. There are a few bugs 
reported though so make sure to test. Here is an article that was
just released by InfoWorld that describes some of them.
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?99029.wcnt4woes.htm

Since Sunbelt implemented SP4 on the Lyris machine (the app that is 
the list server and pushed this to your inbox), we were no longer 
shut down by Denial Of Service attacks from a few hackers. BUT, there 
are a few problems with NT4 SP4 so make sure to TEST before you go 
into production!
----------------------------------

* NT CONSUMER VERSION: STILL 2-3 YEARS OFF?

Microsoft first stated and then denied: NT Consumer will not 
appear until well into 2002. Microsoft says at least one 'minor' 
update to Win98 is necessary. They plan on at least one more W9X-
kernel-based update to W98 before MS delivers its NT-kernel based 
consumer platform, company officials confirm. 

For at least two years MS said that the next version of its desktop 
OS would be based on the NT kernel. They reversed that now, but then
denied it, and said the data was wrong. Well, here is _one_ quote!
"Our next major consumer release is two to three years off," said
Microsoft spokesman Bill Zolna. "It's still in the drawing-board 
phase." Zolna confirmed the next "major" consumer release is NT 
Consumer.

Zolna would not confirm that MS decided to call the next W98 "Windows 
2000 Personal Edition," as some sources indicated. He also said he 
had no data on when users should expect beta or final code for the 
new Windows release. 

Zolna also said "If I were to speculate, I'd say Microsoft realizes 
moving to the NT kernel will take a long time. It's not an easy move 
or anybody. And OEMs want something on the consumer side earlier than 
two to three years from now."

It's obvious that MS is waffling about when they are coming out with 
"NT FOR EVERYBODY". There are problems porting Win9x features like 
Plug & Play to the NT kernel, and incompatibilities with current
apps. Furthermore, it takes a hell of a machine to run W2K both in
RAM and disk space. That makes it a bad candidate for consumer machines
just yet. In two years from now, machines will be ready and I expect
them to have standard 256 or 512 Ram on board in a minimum configuration.

Oh well, I guess NT4 Workstation, SP4 on my brand new Dell Pentium 
II-450 with 256Ram and 10Gig Ultra-SCSI will have to do for now 
I love that new flat screen though, the quality is great and saves a 
helluva lot of desk space. 


***********************************************************************
4. "NT THIRD PARTY NEWS"

* NEW: PRODUCT 'BOS' IS ALTERNATIVE FOR TAPE BACKUP

Want to finally get rid of your Tape Backup Pain? Ever happened you
thought a file was backed up and at the time you _URGENTLY_ needed to 
get it back you found out you could not restore it? Got so much data 
that Tape Backup is practically impossible? 

Well here is a developer that has come up with a very nice innovation 
in that area. Obviously all of you are aware of the (now and then 
incredible) headache to have to make tape backups all the time. You 
have to always check if they completed OK, and they are a constant 
source of worry. 

An Israeli high-tech company that was active in file recovery for 
over 10 years has come up with an innovation you should have a look
at. The product is called BOS and backs up to another machine's
disk drive in a very ingeniuous way. We decided to take it up and 
carry the product as it represents a completely new category in
itself.

Let me give you some benefits and then you can read how they do it 
over at the BOS webpage.

+ stores current backup volume, enabling immediate restore 
without the need to combine files from additional or previous 
backup sets
+ stores multiple backup "generations" (previously possible 
only with backup tapes).
+ provides high speed restore of single file or complete 
library data with just one click of the mouse.
+ identifies, retrieves and accurately manages deleted file 
generations.
+ assures efficient management of all objects, volumes, 
directories or file generations
+ eliminates the high and extended network loading encountered 
during full or full "generation" backups to magnetic tape


Sunbelt sees this tool as a great companion product for Double-Take. 
It does not replace real-time mirroring and fail-over what so ever,
but imagine you have your Double-Take Source server pushing data to
the Target for High Availability, and then backing up the Target 
with BOS to another machine that you plugged in as a dedicated 
Backup Box. With the prices of hard disk space as low as they are,
this gets you double redundancy for your mission critical data. 

It gets you a Restore 20 times faster than from tape and takes
surprisingly little disk space on the dedicated backup box. Here you 
go for your 30-day eval. It's got a 10Gig limit so you have ample 
data to play with: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/bos.htm
-------------------------------


* STORAGE RESOURCE MANAGER 3.01 EE NOW SHIPPING

SRM V3.01 Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive and proactive reporting 
and management solution for NT and BackOffice(R) storage, alerting you 
to problems before users are impacted, and enabling you to manage 
distributed NT storage from your own desks, or anywhere via the Web. 

SRM reduces the amount of time and money you spend managing disk and file
storage, eliminates user productivity losses caused by network storage 
failures and bottlenecks, provides remote control over distributed WAN 
storage, and ensures that the return on storage investments is maximized.

Storage Resource Manager (SRM) 3.01 EE highlights include:

- Increased scalability through integration with Microsoft SQL Server, 
which makes SRM ideally suited for large-scale Windows NT enterprises.

- Storage console interface that creates shortcuts to the most commonly-
equested reports, including Partition Free Space, Soft User Quotas, 
Capacity Planning, Stale File Analysis, Storage Load Balancing, Backup
Planning, Largest Files, and Un-backed Up Files.

- Pre-packaged and user-defined file filters that enable IT managers to
audit network storage for Temporary Files, Paging Files, Mailboxes, 
Graphics Files, and Database Files for strategic projects like server 
consolidation, Storage Area Network (SAN) planning, backup/recovery, and 
data migration.

- Full year historical disk space consumption and use histograms that 
enable you to predict future capacity needs, efficiently load balance 
file servers to avoid productivity losses, and reclaim unused storage.

- Automatic discovery of common directories and Windows NT share points 
for fast and easy user disk space management.

- Alerts, thresholds, reports, and historical trends on directory disk
space levels for centralized quota management and disk space chargeback.

This new release adds the scalability and functionality you need to 
proactively manage your fast-growing, increasingly complex storage.
Download the eval at: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/highsrm.htm
---------------------------------


* RECOVERNT 3.0 NOW UNDELETES VIA THE INTERNET

Some of you may already have read the Lab Report of Windows NT
Magazine about Undelete utilities. They compared the four available
tools and described the functionality. Exec Software's Undelete was
chosen as Editor's Choice. RecoverNT however has one important 
feature that no other tool has: scan and recover files from remote
drives via TCP/IP.

You can recover damaged drives and deleted files from systems on
a LAN/WAN running TCP/IP. The access is based on the IP address. In
case you are responsible for remote machines and you have a link
(either via the Net or your own WAN) this is a very nice feature.

RecoverNT is available in two fashions. One as a stand-alone product 
with a Server and a Client component and needs to be licensed for 
every machine that it runs on. Check it out (plus prices) over at:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/recovernt.htm

The other way is a "Technician's License" (also called "Travelling
License") that allows you to use it on one machine at a time, any
machine you want. The name of the product is changed, as this is a
combo of two products: RecoverNT and RecoverNT Express. The kit has
been named: Forens-NT. (derived from computer forensics that recovers
deleted files in criminal cases).

For $295 you have two tools that together are a great safetynet
against users that undelete files, and they are yours with a perpetual
license. You can whip that tool out at any moment's notice. "Better to 
have something you don't need than to need something you don't have" 
Check it out: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/forensnt.htm

********************************************************************


5. "HINTS AND TIPS - TIME SAVERS AND OTHER GOODIES...

We have been talking in earlier years about cloning NT workstations
for large deployments and the pitfalls connected to it. Microsoft has
finally come out with a system-cloning utility that allows you to
create a drive-image. It does not push it out over the network though.
You need a third party utility to do that, such as the ones from
Symantec, Micro House and the others. 

You're not there yet though. You also need a SID changer or all the
workstations have the same SID which will cause W2K serious security
related problems. In the Win NT 5.0 Beta 2 ResKit is a SID Walker that 
you can use for that. If you have no access to that, there is one for 
free at one of the best NT-sites around: http://www.sysinternals.com/

More info on the cloning issue and a white paper is posted at 
Microsoft's site over here:
http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/deployment/deployment/syspreptool.asp
--------------------------------

You can download five post-SP4 hotfixes as per mid Feb over at
ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/nt40/hotfixes-postSP4

11/20/98 - Nprpc-fix - Closes a vulnerability with RPC service
11/25/98 - Tcpip-fix - Corrects a blue screen problem on SMP systems
12/07/98 - Clik-fix - Fixes the problem with the Iomega Click! drive
1/4/99 - SMS-fix - Eliminates a SMTP memory leak
2/8/99 - msv-fixi.exe - Plugs blank password logon problem

If you want to automate the Service Pack hassle, there is a nifty
utility available for only about $130.00. It's called SPQuery and it's
over here: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/spquery.htm

********************************************************************



6. "THE NT STOCK WATCH" Closing day Thursday Feb 11,99

(00s)
SYMBL SECURITY CLOSE CHANGE VOL 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
AMD Advanced Micro Devices............. 17 3/16 + 9/16 26392
BMCS BMC Softwear....................... 46 3/4 +2 7/8 42445
CTXS Citrix Systems Inc................. 83 7/8 +6 1/4 6543
CPQ Compaq Computer.................... 44 13/16 +2 7/16 125284
CA Computer Associates................ 45 9/16 +2 9/16 20181
DGN Data General Corp.................. 17 7/16 + 13/16 3000
DELL Dell Computer...................... 101 7/8 +4 7/8 240057
GTW Gateway 2000 Inc................... 76 +1 3/8 17811
HWP Hewlett Packard Co................. 75 1/4 +2 7/8 39145
INGR Intergraph Corp.................... 5 1/2 unch 2381
IBM International Business Machines.... 178 1/2 +9 5/8 62824
MUEI Micron Electronics Inc............. 14 15/16 + 13/16 7863
MSFT Microsoft Corp..................... 162 3/4 +2 1/8 150915
NCR NCR Corp........................... 44 1/16 + 9/16 4639
NETA Network Associates Inc............. 46 1/16 +2 15/16 33525
NOVL Novell Inc......................... 19 1/2 + 15/16 57861
ORCL Oracle Corp........................ 59 9/16 +5 7/8 129255
QCOM Qualcomm Incorporated.............. 68 1/8 +1 5/8 15529
FTSW Qualix Group Inc................... 6 3/8 + 1/4 45
SEG Seagate Technology................. 36 5/16 + 1/4 18487
SGI Silicon Graphics................... 18 +1 1/16 8158
SUNW Sun Microsystems Inc............... 105 5/16 +7 7/8 93712
SYBS Sybase Inc......................... 9 1/8 + 7/8 18193
SYMC Symantec Corp...................... 19 1/8 + 7/8 3652
UIS Unisys Corp........................ 32 1/4 +1 13/16 23086
VRTS Veritas Software Corp.............. 72 13/16 +3 3/16 14192
DJIA Dow Jones 30 Industrials........... 9,363.46 +186.15 



********************************************************************

7. "Y2K WATCH" Only 320 days to Jan 1, 2000 

Saturday June 6-th I attended a lecture of the local Y2K-chapter. 
The speaker was Brenda Buchan, an economist working for the Florida
Public Services Commission in the State Capital Tallahassee. She works
100% dedicated on Y2K issues, and has been harassing the Public 
Utilities regarding their Y2K status since January 1997. Brenda just 
got some data back from the North American Enercy Council (NERC) 
meeting in Washington last week.

Everybody's main concern is that the Power Grid stays up. She has been
hammering on these Utilities and some interesting results have come
up. The 'Electrics' have three areas of vulnerability: 
1) Generation Plants
2) Transmission Lines
3) Distribution (local)

It came out that Distribution and Transmission are not very automated
at all and will not cause many problems. Most of the Y2K Bugs are in
the Generation Plants and only 10 of those generate 90% of the power in
Florida.

That spread will be similar in the rest of the USA. So the problem is
relatively concentrated and thus controllable. Florida Power is done 
with 100% of INVENTORY, 93% of ASSESSMENT, and 57% of REMEDIATION and
TESTING and expects to be 100% done at September 30-th 1999.

That seems a little late, but scheduled downtime is the cause of that. 
These guys have windows where they can shut down a plant and the others
catch up the slack capacity.

The 64,000 dollar question was of course "what is the percentage chance
that the nationwide the grid goes down?" She said that mid 1998 the
worst case design was 2 to 5 days maximum. Now that the new numbers 
about Y2K compliance from the Power Utilities has come back and has
been tabulated, the expected WORST CASE design is measured in HOURS, 
not DAYS, and that most consumers will never even notice. That is 
indeed very good news. It does not mean you can sit on your laurels
though. You still need to be prepared for bumps in the road, too much
can go wrong and we all know Murphy intimately by now. 
------

I also was sent the following from one of your and my NT-colleagues:

"Hi, my name is Derek Smith and I work for the largest Power Generation 
Company in the world, Southern Company. Since I am a part of their IT, 
(we call it IR for Information Resources), I can confidently say that 
THERE WILL BE NO POWER OUTAGES BECAUSE OF THE YEAR 2000!!!!! I am, 
like other people, tired of hearing about it!!!! Feel free to show 
this to anyone you wish. If you have any questions about my experience 
with this subject matter, please ask".
Thank you,
Derek Smith

Well, that is quite clear. Thanks Derek!


********************************************************************

8. "HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST"
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off
or change your email address


TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LIST (Tell your friends!)

Click: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?join=nt-list
and fill out the form, simple & easy: 1 minute work.

Or by email, send a blank message to the following address:
[email protected]

_____________________________________________________

TO QUIT THE LIST

1) The Web Way:
http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?
choose the NT-List, use your email address that is at 
the bottom of each newsletter and leave the list via 
the web interface.

2) The Email Way: Simply follow the personalized 
instructions at the very end of this newsletter.
_____________________________________________________

TO CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS

First unsubscribe and then resubscribe as per the
procedure above.

********************************************************************

FOR MORE INFORMATION

On the World Wide Web point your browser to:

For the newsletter and our website:
USA: http://www.sunbelt-software.com

Email for US sales information to:
[email protected]
Email for US Tech support to:
[email protected]
Email to the US Editor:
[email protected]

Email for European Sales to:
[email protected]
Email for European Tech support to:
[email protected]

********************************************************************

Things Our Lawyers Make Us Say:
This document is provided for informational purposes only. 
The information contained in this document represents the
current view of Sunbelt Software Distribution on the issues
discussed as of the date of publication. Because Sunbelt
must respond to changes in market conditions, it should not
be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Sunbelt
and Sunbelt cannot guarantee the accuracy of any informa-
tion presented after the date of publication.

INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS"
WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT.

The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the
use of this document. This document may be copied and
distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) All text
must be copied without modification and all pages must be
included; 2) All copies must contain Sunbelt's copyright
notice and any other notices provided therein; and 3) This
document may not be distributed for profit. All trademarks
acknowledged. Copyright Sunbelt Software Distribution, Inc.
1996-1999.

(email me with feedback: [email protected])