Daylight Saving time poses potential problems

By Jen McShane
Collegian Staff
February 28, 2007

Many people were happy to hear about the extended hours of sunshine that this year’s early Daylight Saving Time will bring, but some computers could be thrown off in the weeks after everyone, including La Salle, springs forward.

A new law went into place Jan. 1 that changed the dates for Daylight Saving Time in order to conserve energy. Now, instead of moving clocks forward in April, Daylight Saving Time will begin the second Sunday in March, roughly three weeks earlier than in the past. Daylight Saving Time will also extend one week into November.

The sudden change has many experts concerned about how computers will react. All computers, no matter what the operating system, have Daylight Saving Time built in to change the time on the clocks on computers. The new law was not yet in effect when the computer feature was designed. Therefore, computer clocks would not turn until the old scheduled Daylight Saving Time.

So what does this mean for La Salle computers? Jeff Leisse of the Information Technology (IT) department says that La Salle computers may automatically update the new times. If not, members of the IT department will fix it manually.

The main concern for the IT department are the mylasalle e-mail and calendars.

“Basically, the issue is that any calendar entries between March 11-March 31 may be off by an hour,” Leisse said.

However, Leisse also said that he was working on the issue and that it, “may be resolved by Feb. 28.”

Many computer companies such as Microsoft saw the change coming and have been working to fix the problem. If a computer is set to automatic updates, then the time will fix itself by automatically downloading the fix at Microsoft’s Web site. If a computer does not automatically update, a manual update can be downloaded at Microsoft’s Web site.

mcshanej2@lasalle.edu