Media Coverages
Daylight-Saving Fiasco on Horizon
By Jim Walsh
February 26, 2007 (Courier Post Online) -- Usually, the sun comes up and it's not a big deal.
But two weeks from today, some people might be unpleasantly surprised by the dawn of an earlier starting date for daylight-saving time -- a change that will have clocks spring forward while it's still winter.
The shift, which extends daylight-saving time by about a month, is meant to curb the nation's energy use. But observers note the "mini Y2K" will affect a wide range of technological tools, and they worry many companies and consumers are still unprepared.
"The impact is really quite large. It touches everything that has to do with time," says Tom Pacek, a computer expert at Voorhees-based Virtua Health System. He's leading an extensive effort to update the hospital system's high-tech infrastructure by the March 11 deadline.
"Some of our vendors seem to be learning about this from us," says Pacek, who read of the change in a trade journal. "It was not well-publicized."
Daylight-saving time now will start on the second Sunday of March, instead of the first Sunday in April. It will end on the first Sunday in November, instead of the last Sunday in October.
But many computers and other devices are programmed to adjust their clocks by the old system, notes Matthew Zito at Grid-App Systems Inc., a New York City technology firm.
Consumers who don't act in time could find VCRs taping shows and Blackberrys showing appointments at the wrong hours. Problems could be more significant for companies that juggle multiple computer operations.
"It's like having an assembly line with a couple hundred people and you change the procedure, and one person doesn't get the memo," Zito says.
"Significant business damage and liabilities could occur . . . if organizations do nothing," says a report from Gartner, a Connecticut-based firm that provides research for technology users.
The company says its analysts recently "raised concerns that daylight-saving time changes will create more operational trouble than expected."
It said technology vendors are providing software patches to update internal clocks, "but many of these are arriving very close to the event."
Gartner also expressed concern for international businesses, noting the change will affect time differences between the U.S. and overseas countries for much of March. And while Canada is making the same shift as the United States, Mexico is not.
A congressman who pushed to include the daylight-saving measure in a 2005 federal energy law now is questioning the government's efforts to publicize the change.
U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the federal Department of Transportation, which administers daylight-saving time, noted the change in a press release in October 2006, "but we are not aware of more recent educational efforts by the department on this matter."
DOT spokesman Bill Mosley on Friday said another press release is in the works. "We expect it will be disseminated widely," he said.
Consumers, like companies, can obtain software upgrades, or patches, from the manufacturers of many high-tech products, notes Matt Dworkin, who provides computer-support service as a member of the Geek Squad at the Best Buy store in Deptford. Many industry giants, like Microsoft and Apple, have patches available at their Web sites, he adds.
And products made since the 2005 law took effect likely will already be aware of the pending schedule change, he said.
"Anything that came out prior to (2005) is going to be caught flat-footed," predicted Dworkin. And he said companies aren't providing upgrades for some older products.
In some cases, Dworkin said, consumers will have to change a clock setting themselves by March 11. Then they'll have to do it again on April 1, because the outdated software will reset the clock according to the old daylight-saving time schedule.
They'll have to go through that two-step procedure again in the fall -- and for the rest of the product's lifespan, Dworkin notes.
Or maybe not.
At Virtua, Pacek notes Congress has the right to scrap the new system if it doesn't produce sufficient energy savings.
"Then," he observes, "we could be going through all this again."