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Guess what? New Microsoft info for Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007 changes

It’s the end of another work week and guess what: it’s time once again to update our Daylight Saving Time 2007 web page on Microsoft.com. (Please see http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007.) In general, more on Daylight Saving Time can be found also at http://www.answers.com/topic/daylight-saving-time.


As I said previously, this public page on the Microsoft.com site will be revised regularly to include new product updates, compatibility information and links to Knowledge Base articles. This week we have a few new additions, including the details for the update to Windows SharePoint Services (KB article 924881).


And no, I’m not changing this blog to the DST blog.


My the factoid of the day: today, a quick query on Live.com Search for DST in 2007 lists 169,932 results, with 413,239 results for DST alone. My money is that the number will increase between now and March 11, 2007.


Interestingly enough as reported on Bloomberg News, “springing forward may not help save energy, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley.”



“U.S. plans to cut electricity usage by lengthening daylight saving time may backfire, the report said. Lengthening daylight saving time by several weeks was included in energy legislation passed in 2005, with the goal of saving energy equivalent to 100,000 barrels of oil a day.


“Extending daylight saving time may actually result in increased electricity demand as additional usage during morning hours cancels out the reduced demand in the evening, according to the Berkeley study. The paper analyzed electricity usage in Australia, which lengthened its daylight saving time by two months while hosting the 2000 Olympics.


“There is no evidence that extending daylight saving time will lead to energy savings,” said Hendrik Wolff, one of the study’s authors, in an interview. “Actually, there is evidence that it may lead to a little higher energy consumption.” 


Now here’s the really happy news: we may go through this change again as “Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.” This to be decided after the US Secretary of Energy (Samuel Bodman) reports back to Congress on what the impact of the change has been in the US. (That will be an interesting meeting.)


Whether you agree or disagree with the change to DST, what can you do? For starters, write your state and federal government officials and let them know: in the States, you can find more information on contacting your senators and representatives in DC by going to http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Legislative.shtml. The EFF has a website to help you contact US policymakers: http://www.eff.org/congress/.


And remember: even though you may not live in the US or Canada where the changes will be felt, people around the world will be impacted, particularly companies with operations, offices, subsidiaries or connectivity to systems based in the US, Canada or Mexico. This change to US DST has a global impact, so if you live outside the US and Canada, consider contacting your own government officials and tell them what you think.


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Your questions: “What about Mac Office, Entourage and Daylight Saving Time?”

Great to hear from an old friend in Silicon Valley who works for a certain company in Cupertino, who asks: “I read your posts on the impact of the chnages to Daylight Saving Time. What about Mac Office — is it OK with the new DST change?”


Glad you asked. 😉


News from the Mac team WRT Entourage 2004: it was updated in this week’s 11.3.3 release to support DST.  A brief note about this can be found on the MacBU public blog…



“Today’s release of the 11.3.3 update delivers a significant change to Entourage’s time zone support, including support for the new DST dates. Prior to this fix, events in the month of March 2007 (starting 3/11) were off by an hour for the majority of US customers. I highly recommend customers update to this release of Entourage prior to the beginning of Daylight Savings observation in 2007. The update seamlessy ensures that your calendar is updated to reflect the new DST rules and improves overall time zone reliability.” 


As for other Mac Office applications and DST, I believe that current Mac Office applications should not be affected as they derive their date functionality from the OS.  In order to ensure that DST observations are correct, end users should update to the latest version of the Mac OS X (which I think is 10.4.6). More info as it is available. See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303411


My thanks to the MacBU for the update.


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“For DST, do I just adjust my clock in the control panel?”

As I mentioned earlier — and just in time for the upcoming changes to daylight saving time that affects many products and services — we have a newly renovated DST 2007 website. (http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007 in case the hyperlink fails.) My posts sparked this question from a reader:



“When I travel, I just change the clock in the Control Panel. So shouldn’t I just change the clock when the new DST rules kick in?” 


No, no, no…


First off, for current Windows XP systems, an update is available for your computer for machines that subscribe to Automatic Update. So your PC will automatically compensate for the new DST changes. (The exception to the rule: older computers with Windows 95/98/ME, where you may choose to not use DST and manually set the clock on the new DST ‘spring forward’ and ‘fall back’ dates.) 


But when you travel, you should change the time zone to the city or area (or country) you’re visiting. If you just set your system clock to the local time, then your actual time will be off (not to mention the jet lag).


For example, let’s say I’m in Redmond, and I fly to New York. My PC is normally set to the Pacific Time Zone (which is GMT -8:00hrs). the Pacific Time Zone (which is GMT -8:00hrs). If I just set my clock to the local time in Manhattan (by right clicking on the clock display, or through the “Date and Time Properties” control panel), which is three hours later than Seattle (GMT -5:00hrs), my clock will appear correct but I’ll be three hours late for all my meetings because my time zone is still set to Pacific.


What’s worse, let’s say it’s 11:00pm Pacific when I make the change: if I move the clock ahead to 2:00am and don’t adjust the date, by clock will be a day behind as I’ve adjucted the clock before the date advances.


If I set just the time zone to Eastern, then all will be fine: my clock will be correct for NYC, and any meetings I have on my computer (or that I schedule in Outlook) will be correct. Here’s more help and tips on time zones, Daylight Saving Time, and e-mail in Windows XP. Now, that won’t fix being late for meetings due to other reasons…


The Office team has a good article describing how to use and set time zones here — you can not only adjust your master time zone when you travel, but you can add a second time zone to be displayed in the Outlook 2007 calendar (handy if you work regularly with a particular international city). From the article…



Dual time zone“You can add and display a second time zone in Outlook, which can be useful when you are scheduling meetings or conference calls with people who are working in other time zones. When you add a second time zone, the current time in the primary time zone is highlighted with a color gradient to make it easier to see.


“If two time zones are shown, the meeting organizer’s time zone is used as the reference point. If you organize a meeting and display free/busy time for invitees from other time zones, their busy times are adjusted so that they are displayed correctly in your time zone. The second time zone is visible only when you view the calendar in day or week view.”


 


The article also notes that start and end times for Outlook Calendar items are stored in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) format… I’ve heard people refer to GMT, UT and UTC all as the same thing, but they’re not. Interestingly enough, it’s Universal Time (UT) which replaced GMT, not UTC. Somewhat depressing, as I enjoy listening to the broadcasters on BBC World News (on NPR, often on my drive home) talk about the current time in GMT: “UT” just doesn’t create the same feeling. 😉


This from the Wiki…



“(UT is) a timescale based on the rotation of the Earth. It is a modern continuation of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), i.e., the mean solar time on the meridian of Greenwich, England, which is the conventional 0-meridian for geographic longitude. GMT is sometimes used, incorrectly, as a synonym for UTC. The old GMT has been split, in effect into UTC and UT1.”


More information:



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New updated page for coming Daylight Saving Time (DST) 2007 changes

As I noted here and here previously, the kick off for daylight saving time (DST) is changing this spring (2007). The start and end dates for the United States will transition to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (a US gov’t web site link). In short, DST dates in the United States will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).


In general, computer systems should be updated to reflect the new DST rules. For most customers, this means applying software patches to select Microsoft products, including various releases of the Microsoft Windows servers and operating systems, Microsoft Office and other applications. In a few important cases, customers must take more considered action, as outlined on our newly renovated DST 2007 website. (http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007) This public page on the Microsoft.com site will be revised regularly to include new product updates, compatibility information and links to Knowledge Base articles.


At the office and at home, my machines that subscribe to Automatic Update (which is all of our Window XP machines at home) received the Windows update, and my Windows Vista machines was just updated, too. 


Many Microsoft applications derive date and time information from the system clock, which “reads” the date and time information from the underlying operating system that it resides, so the changes need only be made to that underlying system. So you may not need to update many applications on your PC – check with your vendor to see if an update is required. For Microsoft products, many updates will be released through a combination of channels including Knowledge Base articles, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and the Microsoft Download Center.


Want to find out the accurate time in the US? Go to http://www.time.gov/ and select your time zone.


Select a time zone



“This public service is cooperatively provided by the two time agencies of the United States: a Department of Commerce agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and its military counterpart, the U. S. Naval Observatory (USNO). Readings from the clocks of these agencies contribute to world time, called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The time maintained by both agencies should never differ by more than 0.000 0001 seconds from UTC (see recent comparisons).”


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What do candy, Microsoft products and Congress have in common?

And the answer? Daylight Saving Time. Let’s just say it’s been a popular discussion topic around the office this week.


A 2001 public service announcement for the upcoming turning back of the clocksFor the history of how this came to be — and to know who you can thank for the extra hour of sleep once a year — look to none other than our multi-talented founding father, Benjamin Franklin. You can read more about DST on NPR’s site. Note that it is not “Daylight Savings Time” (with an extra “s”) as it’s often referred: according to the Wikipedia, this is a “common variant… frequently heard in speech and appears in some dictionaries.”


Now, back to our story. As reported in the news, there’s a change coming in the calendar as we will all be asked to move to Daylight Saving Time a full three weeks earlier than in previous years. This year, we’ll move our clocks on March 11 rather than on the first Sunday in April. To be precise: “daylight saving time (DST) start and end dates for the United States will transition to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. DST dates in the United States will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).”


You can also thank the US Congress for enacting the Energy Policy Act of 2005, much to the joy of one industry in particular: candy manufacturers, who reportedly lobbied for an extension to DST. This sunny extension will allow trick-or-treaters to scream “trick-or-treat” and collect candy for an additional hour. (Or, as we said in Canada, when I bantered about in the Northern dark, ringing doorbells and crying out “Halloween Apples!”) See also this article in the Provodence Journal for more perspectives on DST.


So what does this have to do with Windows?


Glad you asked.


A change to DST means a change to many Microsoft products, including Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003: for these there is “a single global time zone update which will include changes for the United States DST change,” including changes that have been released as hotfixes and noted in various KB articles.


For end-users customers, updates for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 will be available via Windows Update, Automatic Update, and WSUS starting on December 12, 2006.


For our customers and partners, we have a section on our website dedicated to helping you prepare for daylight saving time changes in 2007. Watch the site over the next couple of weeks as it is being updated regularly with information.



“Microsoft will be producing an update for Microsoft products affected by the new United States daylight saving time transition dates. These updates will be released through a combination of channels including Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS), hotfixes incorporated in Knowledge Base articles, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and the Microsoft Download Center.”


For Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007, I believe no updates will be needed, as updated time zone definitions are already included in the products.


Here’s the real fun: Congress may decide to move back to the old schedule. They retained the right to fall back (pardon the pun) to the old 1986 law if after the study period they find that this new change is “unpopular or if energy savings are not significant,” according to the Washington Post. If I were a betting man, I might just take that bet.


More information: We’ll be updating the content on the DST 2007 information page, providing links to key documents and articles that provide more information on DST adjustments for other Microsoft products, including…



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