Sprrring! Get Ready for Early Daylight-saving Time

RISMEDIA, March 6, 2007-(MCT)-Time springs forward a bit sooner this year, so make sure your electronic gadgets get an early jump, too.

Daylight-saving time will start Sunday-three weeks earlier than usual-and will end a week later than normal-the first Sunday in November.

Congress triggered the changes with the 2005 Energy Policy Act. The idea: More time in the sun will lead to reduced energy expenses. Some proponents estimate the United States will save 100,000 barrels of oil for every additional day of daylight-saving time.

Regular folks whose electronic aids don't keep up with the new time shift could show up for their haircuts or business appointments an hour early. Or, even worse, their VCRs might end up recording "According to Jim" at 9 p.m. instead of "Lost" at 10.

Computer experts say not to expect anything more ominous.

"It will probably be a lot of little aggravations rather than big, catastrophic ones," said Steven Ostrowski, a spokesman for the Computing Technology Industry Association, based outside Chicago.

"This is a little bit of a nuisance," said Jeff Breeser, an attorney who leads the technology committee at the Norfolk law firm of Willcox & Savage, "but it is not a Y2K event."

That was the what-turned-out-to-be-overrated fear that computers would go haywire on Jan. 1, 2000.

Preparing for the expanded daylight-saving time has been more of a hassle for businesses, especially large ones. They have to reprogram all of their computers and other devices, which had been automatically set to move an hour later in April.

"It's turned out to be quite bigger than we first anticipated, just from the number of systems and applications that we've had to touch and patch," said Rusty Waterfield, assistant vice president for computing services at Old Dominion University.

It wasn't quite so big for Ernie Stallcop, who owns local franchises of Geeks On Call. He hasn't gotten a rush of calls.
"I don't think we're going to get an extra lot of business from this," Stallcop said, "but then again, I could be wrong."

He could be right. Lots of devices won't need any tinkering.

For Cox Cable users, "basically, it's a nonevent," said Pamela Marino, a spokeswoman for Cox Communications. "We saw it on the horizon, and we took care of it, and it'll be transparent to our customers.

Same for many cell phones. "For most of our customers, the time will update automatically through the network," said Scott Morris, a spokesman for Alltel Wireless in Little Rock, Arkansas. "But if you have changed the time on your phone, you'll need to do it yourself."

Microsoft Corp. officials said they began sending customers updates in mid-February to fix the times on their computers. Those who did not receive them can find them at www.microsoft.com/dst2007.

Generally, the newer your Microsoft system is, the fewer things you need to tweak. Vista, the operating system that Microsoft introduced in January, requires no update.

VCR owners might have to change their times manually, perhaps up to four times: at the old and new start and end times for daylight-saving time.

Installing the patches is far more time-consuming for companies.

"The problem itself is not complex to fix," said Marc Letendre, a spokesman for Ferguson Enterprises in Newport News. "The complexity comes in dealing with the large number of systems and applications that we utilize. We have to assess and potentially fix each one."

At ODU, the jobs included include a room-scheduling system, which took four hours to update one early Sunday morning, Waterfield said.

He's found that a few patches haven't worked the first time. But "for the most part," Waterfield said, "the vendors have been truly on top of this, making patches available, which makes our job easier."

The timing works perfectly for Old Dominion. Spring break starts this week, so Waterfield's staff can finish the updates this week with minimal disruption.

"We might miss a desktop or two, but those will be minor," Waterfield said. "We feel pretty confident we'll have all the patches in place."

Michael Horth, technology director for Willcox & Savage, suggests not leaving much time between patching various systems, such as a Microsoft operating system and exchange server.

And another tip from Scott Wegner, a senior agent for Best Buy's Geek Squad in Chesapeake: At least for a while, double-check appointments set up through computer calendar systems.

"You want to check with everyone," Wegner said. "You may have the right time, but if someone else doesn't, you're not going to show up at the same place at the same time."

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