The world's computers appear to have ridden out the millennium bug without a sneeze, with experts turning their focus to today when big financial markets and businesses reopen.
As revellers watched the sun rise on 2000, they found that lights still shined, bank machines spat out cash, telephones functioned and planes stayed airborne.
Predictions of cyberspace chaos proved as empty as the prophecies of Christian doomsday cultists in Jerusalem, leaving experts to question whether the US$600 billion price tag to immunize business and government against the Y2K bug was necessary.
The fears were that computers would read 2000 as 1900 and shut down. But industry and government officials warned against premature celebrations.
Until millions of workers switch on their computers today, air-traffic control systems handle a full load and global banking systems pump money smoothly through Tokyo, London and New York, they cannot know whether the Y2K bug still lurks in networks, ready to disrupt ordinary life.
"The best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go astray, but this seems to have worked out fine," said Michael Dorfsman, spokesman for the US Bond Market Association.
The Chicago futures exchanges were the first major international market to start electronic trading at 5:30pm local time (2330 GMT) Sunday. Officials said tests on trading floors Saturday went without a hitch.
Earlier, no digital disasters struck any of the world's stock or bond markets or banking systems when the date tripped from 1999 to 2000.
So smoothly were US systems operating overall that the federal government on Saturday evening began scaling back from its virtual war footing.
"It is possible that as early as Wednesday we could go just to the day shift," said Y2K trouble-shooter John Koskinen after sending home half of the 800 people on 24-hour shifts.
Even countries where chaos and disruption can be daily ordeals reported plain sailing.
Venezuela, engulfed by deadly mudslides and floods earlier this month, said its oil industry operations were working normally. So were oil operations in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation where experts feared its chaotic infrastructure would buckle.
Of the 170 countries reporting their Y2K status to the International Y2K Cooperation Center, 133 of them said 11 sectors, including power and telecommunications, were operating normally, according to the Washington-based center.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates said he expects systems at small businesses and other organizations using older computers to face millennium bug- related glitches in the weeks ahead.
Speaking on Cable News Network's Larry King Live program Gates said: "There are lots of snafus that we haven't seen yet.
"There is still a little bit of a mess there that will have to be cleaned up."
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