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Daylight Saving Time site on Micorsoft.com: A new look and feel

New MScom DST 2007 SiteIt’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.)


What do you think?


As I noted 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 latest February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems (KB article 931836). 


And here’s an update on the quick search query on Live Search for DST in 2007: there’s now 280,783 results: that’s more than 100,000 additional results added in the last couple of weeks,  with more than 513,000 results (+100K) for DST alone. I’ll go out on a limb and estimate that we eclipse 1,000,000 by March 11, 2007.


In the news: As Dan Farber noted, “Research firm Gartner cautioned that infrastructure and application level disruptions are likely to occur, especially within calendaring, billing applications and security applications, as well as in handling travel and trading schedules, starting March 11.”


A repeat: someone asked me today if I would again provide the links of where to send your feedback on DST: here you go…



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: “Where can I find Tzedit.exe to edit time zone info?”

First off, this guidance is not for the novice. If you’re not sure about how to use certain tools or update your registry, think twice before you mess around with your operating system files or manually configuring daylight saving time dates by modifying an existing time zone.


I have been pinged a couple of times by folks who have seen older versions of the Knowledge Base (KB) articles that are up on our web site that call for a certain utility previousl released in several resource kits:


“Where can I find Tzedit.exe to edit time zone info?”


We provided a tool that allows users to change the time zone settings on a single computer, cleverly referred to as the Time Zone Editor (aka Tzedit.exe). This tool lets you create and edit time zone entries for the date and time settings in Control Panel.


You can find Tzedit.exe available for download from the Microsoft Download Center here: Download the Tzedit.exe utility package.


In general, don’t download Microsoft (or any other application for that matter) from an unknown third-party web site. Microsoft has scanned this file for viruses and stores the bits on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.



Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows, SBS, Daylight Saving Time, DST.


 

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Your questions: “do we need to update all of our PCs and Servers for Daylight Saving Time?”

I think that I may have to change the name of my blog to the Daylight Saving Time 2007 Blog. 😉


This from a call today “do we need to update all of our PCs and Servers for Daylight Saving Time? We have operations outside the US and Canada, so do we still need to update our systems?”


In short, yes, we recommend that customers update the OS on all systems (client and server machines), especially global customers with operations that touch US and Canadian systems, or other countries with updated time zones (Australia comes to mind). Generally, if you have a business that operates mainly in an unaffected time zone you may not have a pressing need to update your systems as many customers in the US and Canada. Even in areas that are unaffected by the DST change (think Arizona, Hawaii), chances are that businesses in these areas interact with customers in other states where time zones are impacted.


For instance, if an end user outside of these new updated time zones schedules a meeting (using Outlook, for instance) that occurs during the extended DST period (e.g., between Mar 11 and April 1, 2007). The scheduler includes someone who is in or uses a time zone that has changed but has not updated their system with the Windows DST OS update. In this case, the meeting will appear correct on the scheduler’s calendar. But the may be off by an hour for the invited participant if the invitee does not have the OS updates applied. 


Overall, updating your personal computers, handheld devices and servers is a good path to follow, and we provide more info on the newly refreshed Microsoft DST 2007 site. (See here for more details.) And the updates for computers with currently supported operating systems are available now on Automatic Update. 


Another question: “why are you spending so much of your blog on this issue?”


Well, the daylight saving time change over this year is important and timely, and we want our customers and partners to be aware of the changes. Overall, it’s not just Microsoft products that are impacted, but products from many companies that reference or utilize date and time information in the applications and services.


Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows, SBS, Daylight Saving Time, DST.

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Daylight saving time (DST) impacts on Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS 2003)

Sean on his Windows Small Business Server blog posted today that “there are no unique SBS 2003 updates required, although there are updates required to several SBS components (windows Server, Exchange Server, Outlook 2003, Windows SharePoint Services).”


This applies to all versions of SBS, That’s SBS RTM, SBS SP1, SBS R2, etc.


And as I said previously, please stay tuned for more information on a possible encore live event, as well as for general introduction and coverage of DST impacts: watch our Daylight Saving Time 2007 web page on Microsoft.com for more info. (Please see http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007.) 


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Now available: WebCast on Windows 2000 updates for daylight saving time

In case you missed Jorge Lopez in the Support WebCast on Daylight Saving Time and Windows 2000, the WebCast is now available for off-line viewing here  (at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930688/en-us). In it, Jorge covers the daylight saving time (DST) changes for 2007, and we also answered a number of questions on DST in general.


Offline viewing download: If you wish to download a copy of this broadcast to your local hard drive for playing off-line, we provide this as a separate file (.zip archive) that you can download.  (http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/3/8535cb71-6c90-4375-87fb-8908d692cb70/wc011807.wmv.zip


And please stay tuned for more information on a possible encore live event, as well as for general introduction and coverage of DST impacts: watch our Daylight Saving Time 2007 web page on Microsoft.com for more info. (Please see http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007.)  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.


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