Reminder: Microsoft Windows 2009 Daylight Saving Time and Time Zones Hotfix available for Egypt, Western Australia

In case you missed the announcement, there is a new Microsoft Windows 2009 Daylight Saving Time and Time Zones Hotfix available for Egypt and Western Australia. See my original post here.

Once again, as has happened in the past, a couple of countries will see new changes to their observation of Daylight Saving Time (DST), this time in Egypt and Western Australia.

A new Microsoft Knowledge Base article is up – KB 974176 – noting the hotfix now available to update the Daylight Saving Time for the “(GMT+02:00) Cairo” and “(GMT+08:00) Perth” time zones for the year 2009 for Windows Server 2003-based, Windows Vista-based, Windows Server 2008-based, and Windows 7-based computers.

Egypt has announced to change the Daylight Saving Time (DST) to end on midnight August 21st. This hotfix updates the end date of DST for the “(GMT+02:00) Cairo” time zone in 2009. The clock will move one hour backward at midnight between August 20th and August 21st.
Australia has announced the end of Daylight Saving Time for the Western Australia time zone. This hotfix removes the Daylight Saving Time for the “(GMT+08:00) Perth” time zone.

More specifically, this hotfix:

Sets DST end date for Egypt at 23:59:59.999 on August 20th, 2009

Removes DST for Western Australia time zone in 2009.

To get the hotfix, click here to view and request hotfix downloads.

I have to recommend that in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST rules and time zones, governments should provide 1) official confirmations of planned changes to DST and time zones, and 2) provide ample advance notice and concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens is a requirement. If you look at how Australia approached their upcoming change in in 2008 (more details are available here), the national government allowed eight months or so between the announcement and the actual change.

</soapbox>

Tags: Windows, Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS, DST, Egypt, Australia, ; 18,000,000 (up from 3M six months ago); 20,400,000 (up >3M)