A few weeks ago, I wrote a column highly critical of Microsoft's Y2K preparation. Y2K information seemed at the time to be disappearing from the Microsoft support Web site. There looked to be a lot of waffling coming from Redmond about which versions of Windows NT were or weren't Y2K-ready, and I was very concerned about Microsoft introducing Windows 2000 so close to the end of 1999. Pushing customers toward the new version so late in the year seemed to me like a recipe for disaster, and I said so in the column, "Windows 2000, Users Zilch."

Microsoft was not amused.

Annoying Microsoft is something I have done on a fairly regular basis for more than a dozen years, so I know the routine. Some reporters, like my friend John Dvorak, are for the most part ignored by Microsoft no matter what they write, having been given up for lost years before. Dvorak's life is so much easier, if harder to pronounce, than mine for just this reason. That's because I cling to the edge of salvageability in the corporate mind of Microsoft and its public relations firm, Waggener-Edstrom. This means I am sometimes called to Redmond for reeducation. The words "correction" and "retraction" were prominently mentioned in the invitation.

I'm giving up all my secrets here, but the trick when you are called to Redmond for cerebral adjustment is to ask for something up front. "I'll gladly come if you'll just cough-up this or that bit of information." This turns what is supposed to be a spanking into a meeting. It seems very minor, but this asking for quid pro quo changes the dynamics of the event completely because of the simple fact that Microsoft — like just about any other big, complex company — is pretty much unable to generate in less than a month official answers to anything.

So I asked for a spreadsheet bringing up-to-date the Y2K status of many important Microsoft products. This could be a very useful document. I even supplied the spreadsheet template and list of products. My definitions of various Y2K readiness terms were different from Microsoft's, which of course required some further negotiation. The spreadsheet columns that interested me the most, however, were one in which I asked them to list the URLs where each Y2K patch could be found and another where I asked for the name and e-mail address of the person responsible for the Y2K readiness of each product.

With only a couple weeks to work on the spreadsheet before my arrival in Seattle, of course it wasn't ready. Nevertheless, I had a very pleasant morning at Microsoft, meeting with a long line of earnest folks who do nothing but think about Y2K readiness. If I gave an indication in my previous column that Microsoft was doing nothing in this area, I was mistaken. They are throwing lots of bodies and dollars at it.

What's always odd about meetings at Microsoft is that the people are helpful, but they also seem so isolated within their own subculture that they have trouble relating to the outside world. Readers had been telling me that Y2K information was disappearing from the Microsoft Web site: What the heck was with that? "But the information IS available on the Web site," the Microsoft people told me. On the Premier Support site, sure, for which corporate users pay big bucks to gain access, but not in a place that was easily available to you and me. This distinction seemed lost on the folks from Redmond. Maybe they have equal internal access to all sites. I don't know. Or maybe the information was there in some form, but plenty of people were telling me they couldn't find it.

So no wonder Microsoft has been preparing a new consumer Y2K site where all this information is supposed to be available in a simplified form come June 1. This looks to have been, thank goodness, a transient problem. You'll find a link to this new Y2K site listed in the "I Like" section of this page, though don't expect it to function until June 1.

Microsoft also came up with a nifty Y2K analyzer program you can run to see what problems are likely to be faced by your PC come December 31. This application and lots of other useful stuff is on the Microsoft Year 2000 Resource CD, which you can get for free. The CD, which is supposed to be revved quarterly, also includes product updates for Windows, 95, 98, NT, Office 95 and 97 and Microsoft Works 4.5a.

When I asked about what seemed to me to be the flawed logic of introducing Windows 2000 in the latter half of the year, the Microsoft people quietly acknowledged that it probably wouldn't be a good idea for big corporations to leap on Windows 2000 before the end of 1999. Nor did they expect many corporate users to do so. From Microsoft's perspective, it seemed perfectly logical to start selling the OS this year so companies could play with it for awhile then deploy it thoughtfully sometime after January 1. Yes, this does make sense, but I am still disturbed by the idea of putting a big marketing push behind a product that the company tacitly doesn't expect to be deployed in large numbers. Why spend the money? Why not wait until 2000? Obviously, I am not a marketer.

The Microsoft folk said el presidente Steve Ballmer was so concerned about Win2000 being solid and consumers not being misled or inconvenienced that he'd even allow them to ship late if necessary. We certainly haven't seen this idea much in the press, but it makes sense to me. I find myself wondering, though, if Ballmer's having said this doesn't guarantee a Windows 2000 delay until the year 2000. I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Microsoft is very serious about Y2K, and they ought to be. Being the biggest and most visible software company on earth makes them the most vulnerable to criticism. I am placing in the "I Like" section a downloadable spreadsheet file that represents most of the Y2K remediation data for Microsoft products as of today. If you printed the spreadsheet, it would fill 85 pages. This isn't exactly the spreadsheet I was seeking, but it will have to do.

There will be a test.