TOPS

If you thought the Y2K problem was going to break your computer a few years ago, the next thing you have to worry about is the daylight savings time switch in 2007. Of course, in Indiana, DST annoyances plagued our computers and VCRs last year. Most of us just manually changed the time in April and October, because we really didn’t know whether the Indiana (East) or the Eastern designation was correct once our state (well, part of it) made the switch in time zones and use of DST.

Welcome to Chapter 2 of that problem. In a further effort to “save” us time, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which decrees that this year (2007), Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. Previously, it began on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October.

It would be really nice if all our devices that measure time had network connections and could just read the “real” time from a server somewhere…one clock that could be adjusted for these legislative changes. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. The allowances for time zones and time switches throughout the year are programed into each individual computer or VCR, and we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with this problem.

For years, Indiana was an exception in the space/time continuum and computer programmer’s finally acknowledged that with a special setting in their computer software. When we set our new computers up and chose a time zone, we were offered one called Indiana (East) which took care of the calculations (or lack of them) because we did not observe daylight savings time.

Don’t get me started on the events of the past two years, suffice it to say that the PTB (Powers That Be), decided to fix a problem many of us did not know existed, and consequently, Indiana has now become a state of several time zones and counties who may or may not now observe daylight savings time. Setting up new computers required actually thinking about where we sat at the time and what time it really was as we sat there!

Now this new monkey wrench. So, I’ve done some reading and at this point here is the way computer owners will need to respond to these new DST rules:

Mac OS pre-10.3: During the newly saved time (three weeks in March and one week in November), you will either display the wrong time or you will have to manually reset your clock. Forever until the end of time (or when the legislature decides to change time again).

Mac OS 10.3: There is a “fix” that can be installed for this version of operating system. The fix has been developed at Stanford University, so I tend to trust it, though I haven’t studied it extensively. It (and information about what it does and how to use it) can be found on

http://www.stanford.edu/~icomfort/panthertz/Panther-TZ-2007a.dmg
http://www.stanford.edu/~icomfort/panthertz/patch-panthertz.sh
http://dstpatch.com/

Mac OS 10.4.6 and higher: This version of software will reflect the changes.

Windows 2000: Microsoft has announced that they will issue patches to deal with the DST time issue only for supported operating systems. Windows 2000, while in use on many computers and servers, will NOT be patched to automatically adjust for this time change. You are on your own.

Windows XP and Vista: Although I have not yet found specific confirmation, I would guess the above statement (Microsoft will issue patches for supported operating systems only) means that some of those software upgrades that download to your computer at the most inconvenient times will include patches. The new Vista (again, I haven’t confirmed this) will probably be correct out of the box.

If you use eBay, a calendar program, email or any business software on your computer, you will need to deal with this issue. Not doing so will cause you problems in so many unimagined ways! eBay auctions are time sensitive. Email is time and date stamped (and, I suspect, legally admissable in a court of law), as are documents you create on your computer. Having the incorrect time on your computer will cause you to miss (or be early, depending on the time of the year) meetings, church services and school programs if you use any kind of computer datebooks.

But remember, we are saving a lot of daylight here!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 9:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.