Savings change confusion for computer clocks

BRIONY SNEDDEN
Wednesday, 8 March 2006

An extension to daylight savings in some States until the end of the Melbourne Commonweath Games could lead to confusion for computer clocks.

Maitland City Council administration and information technology manager Jon Dundas said he had received a number of emails from businesses concerned about the automatic updating on computer clocks on March 26 - despite the extension until April 2 in NSW, Victoria, the ACT, South Australia and Tasmania.

He said the community, and particularly businesses, should be aware of the situation.

Appointments and meetings in Outlook Express would be thrown out, as well as authentication systems such as tokens or smartcards for the week between March 26 and April 2.

ôWhat could happen is that computer-based diaries or calendars could be an hour out for that week,ö Mr Dundas said.

ôBut of more importance is that processors that work to scheduled times may also be affected, like automatically locking doors and things like that.ö

To avoid a week of confusion, Microsoft has developed a patch that could be loaded onto computers to delay the Daylight Savings update until the correct date. Mr Dundas said.

He said the patch could be downloaded from the Microsoft website and was easy to install.

The patch should be downloaded before March 26 after April 2.

Other alternatives were to remove daylight savings time adjustment in Windows and re-enable it on April 2, or manually update the time on all Windows servers, workstations and devices.