So we’ve made the switch back from Daylight Saving Time yesterday at 2AM, and like every year I got up in the morning and made the round of the house to set all clocks, watches, computers and other devices one hour back. This is always a bore – there are so many time-aware contraptions in a typical home…
But this time I noticed one new thing – about half of these contraptions did not need resetting. The computers changed their time on their own (seems trivial to you folks elsewhere, but in Israel the changeover date follows the Jewish calendar and local politics, so it’s different every year; looks like Windows 7 knows how to pull the information in better than XP had). My smartphone got the correct time from the cellular provider over the airwaves. The PVR in the living room got the time from the cable company. Only watches and standalone clocks like the one in the car needed fixing manually!
This is one advantage of the fact that – let’s face it – computers have pretty much taken over everything in our modern environment. In the past decade or two microprocessors have infiltrated every machine, from your car to your dishwasher; but now they can also talk to each other over their global network and manage their own time zone affairs while we sleep!
Scary? perhaps… but very convenient! 🙂
it’s more convenient to live in a place (like where i do) that doesn’t pay attention to DST.
And where is that land of wonder?…
arizona, usa. because of the heat and power usage for cooling, the last thing we want is more hours of sunlight in the summer. i would imagine parts of your country could do without that either.