It might be normal, but is it right?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 07 April 2008 12:24

Opinion and Analysis

In the last several days I've noticed a couple of IT issues that left me wondering what the word 'normal' really means.

Australia came off daylight saving time last weekend. There were a few issues, as in some states the change occurred on a different date to the previous pattern due to a desire to synchronise the change.

Microsoft had released an update for Windows several months ago, but not everyone had applied it and so those systems displayed the wrong date. It's usually a minor nuisance when the display in a lift (elevator) is our by an hour, but people who don't wear wristwatches and rely instead on their (not so) smartphones were probably late for at least one appointment.

The fun really started when people tried to adjust the time zone setting to compensate, as that resulted in events in Outlook being adjusted to the wrong times.

Much the same problem, colleagues tell me, also occurs when you travel with a notebook and adjust the time zone to reflect your new location. If you have an event set for say 10am in your local time and you move west by a full time zone and change the settings, that event is rescheduled for 9am.

That's crazy! If you've entered a series of appointments in their 'natural' times before departing on a business trip, you must either leave the computer on your home time zone and accept that the clock displays incorrectly, or have the right time shown with your list of appointments shot to hell.