A CHANGE TO daylight saving in south-eastern Australia has sparked fears of a mini-Y2K problem as internal clocks on computers, smartphones and corporate servers are put out out of sync.

Apparently, the states of NSW, Victoria, ACT, Tasmania and South Australia have decided that summer time will end a week later than usual on the first Sunday in April.

The big idea was to harmonise daylight saving dates across the continent and give Antipodeans more daylight hours. But the changes seem to have caught computer departments with their pants down.

Few have released updates or anything to cope with the new time system. In fact, most networks are still running the old systems.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Microsoft has issued an update that will synchronise computer clocks with the daylight saving changes. But IDC has warned that widespread problems could occur if people were not made aware of the issue and did not take action to fix it.

Mind you, when they had the same problem in New Zealand last year and nothing terrible happened.

That has not stopped the Aussie IT press dubbing the problem as being as terrible as the millennium bug, although they have to admit it is on a smaller scale and with less serious consequences. µ

L'Inq
Sydney Morning Herald