Due to legislation from 2005, the United States will switch to Daylight Saving Time on 11 March this year. Europe will not switch until 25 March, which means two weeks of time differences instead of the usual one week we've adjusted to. On one hand, this is not a big deal. Most of us can make careful note of meetings we schedule involving participants on both continents, and we normally rely on our software as a sanity check, as you can choose the Daylight Saving option to automatically roll the time forward or back as necessary. However, this year is different.

The reason it's different is that much of the software that we use to automate the time changes needs to be patched. The good news for Vista users is that your OS is ready. Vista was designed with the awareness of these changes. In fact, any appliance, such as VCR, clock, or software that was created after this legislation took affect should be prepared for this change. Microsoft product users will need to go to Microsoft to download one or more patches to their PC that should take care of the issue on whatever Microsoft software they use. Those who download the monthly updates regularly may already have received the updates, but they should still be checked.

Microsoft is on top of this issue, and has a list of affected products and procedures for updating them. However, for Exchange users, the problem is more complex than it might seem. Exchange Server must of course be updated, but appointments in your calendar will not be updated until the meeting organizer's software is updated. Also, recurring appointments have the time zone embedded in them, whereas standalone appointments do not which means they are affected differently. Microsoft itself recommends that for the time period between 11 March and 1 April, users pay very close attention to their calendars and that everyone manually write the time of the appointment in the email in addition to selecting Outlook options.

Freeform Dynamics uses hosted Exchange, and out of curiosity I contacted our SP to see what they were doing and how things were progressing. I got a call back from someone pretty quickly who told me they were taking things slowly and cautiously. They had some customers who had installed the patches themselves and found that email crashed. Because they didn't want this to happen on the hosted service, they were testing Exchange and Outlook systems thoroughly before they rolled it out on live servers. At the time we talked, they weren't prepared to give me a date for release, so for now, I will have to double check all my appointments individually. That's not a big problem for a small company, but it is worth checking with your IT staff or your Outlook administrator.

Meanwhile in the States, the sorts of fear-mongering stories that cropped up around the Y2K transition are emerging again. Warnings of the possibility of systems malfunctioning, of infrastructure crashing and so on appear occasionally to stoke the public imagination. Sales of potable water and other supplies will probably rise in the short term, but for most of the US, there is a greater danger of freak March snow storms causing problems than an early time change.