The New Daylight Savings and Your Computer

Do you remember the days leading up to the year 2000 changeover, something called Y2K? That's when so many computers had to be changed and updated to accommodate the new century date changes. Well, we have something similar happening now...and the doomsday date is 3/11/07.

That's when the new daylight savings law goes into effect. Congress changed the law so that we start daylight savings three weeks earlier than before and end it one week later than previous years. No big deal, right? Except for the rest of the world that doesn't have daylight savings or those countries that still begin daylight savings on 4/1/07 (which is most of them). We are being put out of step with everybody else so that we can conserve energy (yea, right).

But, I digress. The real problem that affects us computer users is that our operating systems, namely Windows, are still programmed to automatically change over (and back) to daylight savings on the old dates. Several other programs are affected as well. But for most of us, the problems are mainly going to be with your operating system and Outlook.

Here is the skinny...If you run Windows Vista, you don't have a problem. It is built into the system. A patch for Windows XP is available and will be pushed out with the automatic updates prior to 3/11. If you don't have your computer set for those automatic updates, you can download it now from a special Microsoft Web Page. You may read about it at on a separate Web page.

If you run Windows 2000, there is a fix, but you have to be a member of Windows Hotfix Support in order to get it. I assume that costs money. Other earlier Windows operating systems did not have automatic date changeovers, if I remember correctly, so those have to be done manually anyway.

Microsoft has also put together an overall summary Web page about this new daylight savings "bug" that you should take a look at to see if you have any other programs that might be affected. If you own a business or run Exchange Server, you really need to read this page carefully. This affects not only the server, but each user's mail program who access the server. If your cell phone or PDA uses Windows CE or Windows Mobile, you are also affected.

So, be aware of this situation and make sure everything goes well for you on March 11.