Time change

Be alert! The ‘spring forward’ clock re-setting has come earlier this year.

If you were looking forward to an extra hour of daylight Sunday, you may wind up spending some of it making sure your phones, computers and other tech gear reflect the time change.

With the earlier start and end this year — Nov. 4 — of Daylight Saving Time, some, but not all, digital systems and software are ready for the shift.

A federal law, approved in 2005, changed Daylight Saving Time to start three weeks earlier and end one week later than normal starting this year.

I didn’t know that until I heard it on the radio this morning. Took me by surprise, and I’m thinking it could wreak a bit more havoc than usual this year.

Many devices now in use rely on software programs that were created before the law passed, and will need updating.

Great. It’s been hard enough to learn the bells and whistles on some of these devices. Now…

It will be up to you to make the time change in some cases:

Cell phones, BlackBerries and PDAs: If you’ve got a cell phone that is basically just, well, a cell phone, the time change will automatically kick in, as it does when you travel to different time zones.

But, says Verizon Wireless, when it comes to BlackBerries and “most” PDAs or “smart phones” that run Palm or Windows Mobile operating systems, customers will be “required to update or patch their devices,” by going to the company’s Web site.

The same is true for Cingular and other services. Cingular says on its Web site that two very new devices, the Samsung BlackJack and Nokia E62, do not need any software updates.

Wireless e-mail programs, though, such as Good Mobile Messaging and Xpress Mail, do.

Are you with the program, so far?

If you use your Palm or another PDA strictly as a calendar or information source, and it’s not connected to a network, you’ll still need to update it by doing a download from the manufacturer’s Web site and syncing to your PDA.

This is getting confusing. And then there are the cable, new-tech tv situations to trouble-shoot. TiVo, Cox and Comcast report that they’ve got you covered…unless you have a digital video recorder. You’ll have to actually read the manual(!) or go to the manufacturer’s website for instructions on that.

Is this beginning to sound like the Y2K thing again?

Okay, so what about….iPods?

iPods: You may not use your iPod as your clock, but it does have one. 

“Users will need to sync up with their computers to get that update to Daylight Savings Time, and it will be automatically updated,” said Tom Neumayr, Apple’s senior manager for iPod.

That brings us to:

Computers: If you bought a PC with Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system on it, or have upgraded to Vista, you’re in luck. You don’t have to do a thing.

That leaves the rest of us, which is most of us. If you use Windows, and have had Microsoft’s Automatic Updates feature enabled, you should be fine.

If you’re not sure, go to Microsoft’s support Web site for an update.

Of course. Isn’t that the familiar refrain for most of us? So where does that leave those clever Mac folks?

Mac users also need to check to see if they have the latest operating system updates on their computers to reflect the time change.

Daylight Saving Time updates for OS X were posted on Apple’s support Web site Feb. 15.

Aha. Mac is in the same boat, overall, with the rest of the computer and telecommunications world. And it shoves off this Sunday, ready or not.