Tag: IT management

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CES: Gates touts the home server (CNET coverage)

I can finally let go the part-time IT administrator at the house (that would be me): Bill Gates is showing off the new Windows Home Server. CNET has coverage today of “a consumer device to serve as a central storage place for digital photos, music and other media. The first products are due out later this year from Hewlett-Packard and others. The goal is to get devices that can cost less than $500.”


CNET has an interview with Bill and asks why people will want (or need) to have a server in their home (or even a small business). One challenge has been that the technology, maintenance and upkeep of a server were beyond the abilities of regular consumers, and CNET digs right into that question:



Click for galleryQ: One of the things you are talking about at CES is a new home server? Why does the average home need a server?


Gates: If you have got multiple PCs, then you want files that are available all the time no matter which PCs are turned on or off, and you’d also like to have a server that when you just add just add storage it automatically takes advantage of that. You don’t have to think about drive names or moving files around.


In fact you get redundancy so that even if you have physical failures you have recoverability.


Does that mean that every home is going to need a server administrator?
Gates: No it’s important to look hard at what the focus of that device has been, which is the easy setup and no ongoing need to worry about it at all. Remote access has been hard to set up. We’ve focused in on that. Making it so that it is all recoverable has been hard. Adding storage has been hard. We feel great about what we’ve done in this product. We think it is a real leadership product. Homes with multiple PCs will find it very attractive.

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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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Daylight Saving Time updates via SUS, WSUS for Windows XP and Server 2003

As I mentioned in my previous post on Daylight Saving Time changes, there are updates available now and some scheduled to come down. Here’s the info from the latest KB article:



Update for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP (928388)


Locale: All
Deployment: Windows Update, Microsoft Update, WSUS, SUS 1.0, and Catalog
Classification: Updates, Non-Security
Target platforms: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP
Approximate file sizes:



  • Windows XP Update: ~514 KB

  • Windows Server 2003 Update: ~522 KB

  • Windows Server 2003 IA-64 Update: ~1056 KB

  • Windows Server 2003 x64 and Windows XP x64 Update: ~717 KB

Description: Installing this update enables your computer to automatically adjust the computer clock on the correct date in 2007 because of revised Daylight Saving Time laws in many countries. After you install this update, you may have to restart the computer. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388


Also see this reference in the update for Australia…



Australia has implemented Daylight Saving Time in the West Australia (Perth) time zone starting in December 2006 for a trial period of three years. Install this update to enable your computer to automatically adjust the computer clock on the correct date. After you install this item, you may have to restart the computer. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929120


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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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