Daylight saving confuses computers

MATTHEW MARTIN | 18th March 2008

Confused over when Daylight Saving ends this year? If so, you are in good company.

Telecom New Zealand's 0800 talking clock service was advising callers during the weekend that daylight saving had ended.

The service said people should put their clocks back an hour at 3am on Sunday morning to 2am, but by about 9.50am Sunday the service had been fixed.

Rotorua information technology (IT) consultant Stephen Post said he was also unaware that Daylight Saving was due to end on the first Sunday in April.

"To be honest I thought it finished on Monday morning because when I got to work one of my computers was an hour fast."

He said they did have a few people with minor problems when Daylight Saving started in September last year.

"They were easily fixed over the phone," he said.

Mr Post said that as far as he knew the problem would only effect computers running pre Microsoft XP software.

Peter Davidson, an IT expert from Gen-i Ltd, said he had not heard of any businesses in Rotorua directly affected by the time shift but one of his colleagues did miss a few appointments.

"The time on her PDA [Personal Digital Assistant] had changed and she was an hour late to her morning appointments, but that was soon fixed," Mr Davidson said.

Daylight Saving in New Zealand was changed last year with three additional weeks added following a petition from United Future leader Peter Dunne.

Daylight Saving began on September 30 last year when clocks were put forward an hour.

It runs for a period of 27 weeks and ends on the first Sunday in April when 3am becomes 2am.

General manager of Need A Nerd Ltd, Rotorua's Adam Dunkerley said there was definitely no need to panic and the problem was not a recurrence of the Y2K bug in the year 2000.

"We are not aware of anyone who is directly affected by daylight savings change, the worst case scenario is that you will be an hour late but the problem is easy to fix with an online update.

"Companies that rely on correct timing for things like payments and wages would have kept an eye on it," he said.

Mr Dunkerley, who writes a technology column for the Daily Post, said the software running on computers and PDA devices may well be completely in the dark about the change saying action is required or these devices will be one hour off the pace for the three affected weeks.

"You will need to run a software update to correct the time zone settings for your computer's system clock and any calendar and scheduling applications you are running," he said.

"Failing that you should contact the company that supports any of your non-Microsoft software to ensure they are dealing with the issue."