Y2K Bug problems at eatery

03.04.2001 By MICHAEL FOREMAN Anyone who thought the Y2K problem was dead and buried will find it is alive and well at Auckland's Paramount Restaurant.

Joint owner Emma Griggs confirmed that the Remanco table management system used in the restaurant could not cope with 21st-century dates. She has had to set the system date to 1995 and then get staff to correct receipts by hand.

"It's not Y2K-compatible at all. It's hopeless."

She said the problem had been fixed on a later version of the software, but she refused to pay $7000 she claimed to have been quoted for the upgrade.

She inherited the Remanco system when she bought the restaurant about five weeks ago, but the previous owners had been running it for about 2 1/2 to three years.

Harry Gallagher, of Hammerheads restaurant in Tamaki Drive, said he provided technical support to Remanco users on behalf of Sydney-based distributor Remtech.

He said nine Auckland restaurants used Remanco, of which only two were Y2K-incompatible.

Remtech managing director Wolf Berens said the Remanco software had been acquired by Canadian ERP vendor Geac, but he confirmed that his company was a distributor.

He knew of the Paramount restaurant but denied supplying the software to the original owners.

Mr Berens said he could not answer for Geac on why users should be charged to correct a Year 2000 problem in its software but he "imagined considerable costs were involved."

Ron Fitzgerald, Sydney-based manager of Geac's hospitality division, said his company had acquired the Remanco point-of-sale system about two or three years ago.

Mr Fitzgerald said he was not familiar with the specific case but Governments and corporations had spent thousands of dollars upgrading their hardware and software systems in preparation for the year 2000.

He did not believe these upgrades were or should be provided free of charge.

"Quite frankly, $7000 to upgrade something to Y2K compatibility is not a lot of money."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=180712&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 02, 2001

Answers

Good catch Martin, I've been slackin' the
international papers. Thanks.

There's a legal issue called merchanability
that is at stake here. One buys the software
with the assumption that it will work no
matter what year it is ::::-§

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), April 02, 2001.

merchantability

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), April 02, 2001.

Oh the horror! The "table management system" is down! Sorry, we can't seat you.

LOL!

-- Buddy (buddy@no.where), April 03, 2001.