Daylight Saving Time – what time is it anyway?

In our fast paced globally connected world, I find myself asking potential meeting attendees ‘what time is it where you’re at?’. This is just a common question these day with us conferencing/doing demos of POS Software with others in multiple time zones and/or on the other side of the globe.

This year could make that question a little more difficult to communicate as the change to Daylight Savings time has been moved. Although the effect sounds minor and most computer systems already have an update available to keep your time correct, the update may or may not be applied to all computers involved.

When you schedule that conference on March 11th to demo the new ProphetLine POS Software, will it be at 11 CST, 10 CST or both (if some computers are unpatched and don’t change the time correctly)?

Want to make things worse, what about your VCR and the recording you are counting on of ‘Heroes’ or ‘CSI’. Will the time be right or will you get to find out what comes on after the show you wanted to see?

Install updates for your computers and cell phones if available. Verify the date on the computer, in your POS Software, your calendar software and other time sensitive applications. Most vendors will have some utility to check/update the dates you already have. Microsoft advises heavy calendar users to download a small program known as ‘tzmove’ (time zone move). It is designed to retrofit all previous appointments to the new daylight saving rules.