Western Australian 2009 Daylight Saving Changes Updated 28 September 2009

dglover — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:19:32 GMT

original posting at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/bb821275.aspx

On 16 May, Western Australians rejected by referendum a proposal to extend their trial of daylight savings. As a result there will be no daylight savings in WA this year or for the foreseeable future.

This change will affect Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Outlook and other Microsoft, third party and custom applications, which are currently programmed to adjust their clocks on 25 October 2009. However, we have taken important steps to help you proactively address the issue.

The Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning Guide provides detailed guidance on preparing Microsoft solutions in complex environments for changes in daylight saving. Click on the links below to download the document in your preferred format:

What is the impact of Daylight Savings changes?
Effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to changes in business critical services that are time dependent.

What is affected?

All Microsoft Windows PC, server and mobile devices in the affected time zones must be updated to ensure accuracy of internal time zone tables and correct operation of the system clock.
Microsoft Office Outlook calendars may need to be adjusted. Client and Server-based tools are available to automate this service.
Microsoft, third party and custom applications which schedule events at future dates should be reviewed to ensure they will operate correctly from 25 October onwards. Previously scheduled events may also need to be adjusted.

What do I need to do?
Thorough planning and testing for these changes is critical to ensure the change results in minimal user impact, so to help customers prepare Microsoft has developed the Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning document which details the nature and impact of the DST changes, along with planning guidance to avoid user impact.

What if the systems have been previously patched?
Where servers, workstations and mobile devices have been added to the infrastructure, organisations will need to audit their environment to ensure all systems are updated according to the organisation's Daylight Savings Plan.

Where the environment does not have a consistent Daylight Savings Time (DST) update level, appointments may have been created with a mix of correct and incorrect DST transition dates.

Windows 7 RC and the Sacrosanct Family Windows Media Center

dglover — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:53:04 GMT

Finally the Windows 7 Release Candidate is generally available and if you live in Australia then head on over to www.microsoft.com.au/windows7 and download a copy which will be available at least through June.

Ok in my household the Windows Media Center is sacrosanct only to be tampered with by the fearless or in my case the reckless. So as soon as I got my grubby hands on the Release Candidate I naturally wanted to install it on to the family Media Center. Now in fairness, I did do a Vista System image backup on the "working" system and I'd recommend you do the same to avoid any family reprisal and simply roll the system back if your experience is not so great!!

So as per my previous posting "Oh Yeah Finally built a Vista Media Centre with PAF" with exactly the system reference as outlined in that posting I set to work installing Windows 7 RC 64 bit Ultimate Edition. I updated to version 9.4 of the graphics driver (as of May 5th, 2009, cose the out of box driver is crap) for the integrated ATI Radeon HD3200-based graphics chipset and downloaded and installed the latest 64 bit driver for the DigitalNow TinyTwin Dual Digital USB Tuner. The I fired up the Media Center and set to work scanning for TV stations and setting preferences as I like them.

Stuff I really liked!!

The first is easy, over the air EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) finally just works for Australia, all the stations picked up their respective guides, fan-blimin-tastic, and hey you can even colour code the guide based on genre; news, movies, sports etc, cute!!
Built in Divx support rocks!!
Media libraries make more sense and you can now specify UNC (eg \\server\media) names (plus credentials) for media you may have setting on a home server or NAS, very handy!!
Ability to turn off pesty system notifications from the Media Center menus rather than hacking the registry
Love the music media montage made up of all the music album covers, hmmm, looks hot!!
It just works and has been doing so for about near a week and not an ill word uttered by anyone:)

Stuff I don't like.

Honestly for now, nothing bugs me about it.

Go on, give it a whirl, you'll love it and well ya know you going to anyways, just wait till they've all gone to bed;)

Tomorrow I'll write up my experiences with Windows 7 Release Candidate and my ASUS Eee PC 1000H, basically it just worked, too easy, all drivers in the box only needed to install the latest ASUS APCI Driver and Super Hybrid Engine utility and was good to go.

Cheers Dave

Dave Glover "Down Under (Oz)" : Media Center

Western Australian 2009 Daylight Saving Changes Updated 28 September 2009

Windows 7 RC and the Sacrosanct Family Windows Media Center