I had the pleasure of speaking today with ZDNet‘s Mary Jo Foley about the upcoming Daylight Saving Time change and her Tips for Microsoft users. She blogs that the change is about a one month away until the new Daylight Saving Time (DST) changes take effect in the U.S. and many other countries, and this was another good article calling attention to the change that seems to be getting more press. (Note that much of Europe won’t switch to European Summer Time until March 25th.)
As Mary Jo noted, Microsoft will start pushing out to Windows users a new update (KB 931836) needed “in order to keep their computer system clocks running on time.” You may’ve already downloaded and installed this currently ‘recommended’ update on Microsoft Update (KB 928388), as we first made it available just after the ‘fall back’ last year.
I noted this week that this new Windows OS update includes a bunch of late-breaking time zones: the new updates include the North American DST 2007 changes as well as other global changes, the change for Western Australia (KB 929120), and several additional changes that have occurred since KB928388 was originally released (such as Newfoundland) to the DST 2007 North American rules.
Turning on Automatic Updates (‘AU’ around the office) ensures that you receive these software updates from Microsoft when they are available next week. You can configure Automatic Updates to download and install your updates automatically (as I do at home, to run after I go to bed), or you can set AU to download them and then prompt you to install them yourself. (To make sure you have Automatic Updates turned on, visit Microsoft Update).
A note for corporate users with WSUS and SMS: This new update (931836) is a cumulative rollup of prior updates plus additional changes, and will be published on Windows Update and WSUS as an Update Rollup next week on Feb 13th. Because KB 931836 is an Update Rollup, it will also be available for scanning and deployment using ITMU, the Microsoft Update for IT used by SMS. Customers who have previously deployed KB928388 and who are not in the newly updated time zone areas do not need to deploy this prior to March 12, but should ultimately roll this update into their environments to ensure complete and accurate time zone databases on all servers and PCs.
Also, there are a few news articles on the DST change that refer to our new site — including USA Today and Cleveland’s First Coast News — and general news coverage in Forbes, PCWorld News and the Houston Chronicle.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows, Vista, Daylight Saving Time, DST. 297,241 & 530,585
