Jibi-Jabber: Daylight Savings & the BlackBerry

Another week, another new member of the BlackBerry Cool team. We’re happy to tear our good pal Jibi away from his work over at BlackBerryForums and have him weigh in on topics concerning the BlackBerry world. Be sure to check back for regular installments of Jibi-Jabber, and I’m sure you’ll all make him feel at home.

DST 2007 Changes in the United States, Canada – RIM and a Rant

Earlier in the week, RIM released an overview of the DST changes and issues within most areas of the United States and Canada, along with information concerning their approaches to resolutions, including the mention of some obscure (for now) patches to address the devices. More information for the issues that the DST changes could impact and RIM’s resolution(s) can be found at www.blackberry.com/dst2007. This is an actual resolution, updated from their manual workaroundposted in early November.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005, as it implies, was established in the 2005 calendar year – in early August to be more precise. In other words, it has been 522 days since the United States President George W. Bush signed this policy into effect and we’re just now receiving notification that there are going to be some patches required to address the change in Daylight Saving Time. Other major software vendors have not been any more efficient in their response to the change to DST, with the likes of Microsoft only releasing their OS updates late last month (for non-legacy operating systems).

It is my opinion that changing the time period for Daylight Saving Time has a potential for more impact than the Y2K bug that plagued everyone in the world a few years ago (New Year’s Eve spent with a handful of nerds who liked wine coolers *cringe*). After the 2,000 years of preparation for Y2K and the rather expensive last minute cram sessions for resolutions in the waning months of 1999, you would think that the software vendors servicing Corporate America (and Canada) would have learned their lesson. Wishful thinking, eh?

As for the various BlackBerry solutions, it would appear that all legacy devices running on an OS prior to 4.0 will NOT be supported by RIM. This should be expected. Desktop Manager and IntelliSync users should upgrade to version 4.2 SP1 or later to address the DST change resolution for USB Time/Date Synchronization, although this updated version has yet to surface on the BlackBerry Support Downloads webpage as well as the appropriate DST 2007 patch from Microsoft . For BES administrators, your resolution depends on your version of BES and messaging platform, so please refer to RIM’s DST website for more information regarding a fix for your environment.

Let this article serve as a notice to all BlackBerry users to keep an eye on www.blackberry.com/dst2007 as well as BlackBerryCool.com for updated information concerning March’s change in Daylight Saving Time. Also, let this servce as notice to the software companies of the world – if you have 19 months to deliver a software fix and resolution to such a major change standard practices, don’t wait until the 11th hour to release your resolution to your users. We deserve a bit more respect than that, don’t you think?

As a reminder for everyone, Daylight Saving Time in the United States and Canada (for applicable DST time zones) has been moved up to March 11 at 2:00 AM through November 4 at 2:00 AM.

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DavidS

I am delighted that Blackberry is getting the ball rolling for DST2007 now. Please remember that all Outlook/Exchange/and operating system changes must be rolled out together. The reason for this is that you want to keep the window of opportunity for bad calendar entries as small as possible. Another thing not well know is that there are tools showing up online that can handle both supported and unsupported versions of Windows. The one at http://www.sharpebusinesssolutions.com/dst2007 claims to be able to handle NT4 through Windows 2003 and Vista. It also includes all daylight saving changes for all countries worldwide. For companies with offices in Mexico, it also has a feature that I haven’t seen elsewhere to help admins switch to the new time zones that had to be created for Mexico for the DST2007 change.
DavidS

I am delighted that Blackberry is getting the ball rolling for DST2007 now. Please remember that all Outlook/Exchange/and operating system changes must be rolled out together. The reason for this is that you want to keep the window of opportunity for bad calendar entries as small as possible. Another thing not well know is that there are tools showing up online that can handle both supported and unsupported versions of Windows. The one at http://www.sharpebusinesssolutions.com/dst2007 claims to be able to handle NT4 through Windows 2003 and Vista. It also includes all daylight saving changes for all countries worldwide. For companies with offices in Mexico, it also has a feature that I haven’t seen elsewhere to help admins switch to the new time zones that had to be created for Mexico for the DST2007 change.
DavidS

I am delighted that Blackberry is getting the ball rolling for DST2007 now. Please remember that all Outlook/Exchange/and operating system changes must be rolled out together. The reason for this is that you want to keep the window of opportunity for bad calendar entries as small as possible. Another thing not well know is that there are tools showing up online that can handle both supported and unsupported versions of Windows. The one at http://www.sharpebusinesssolutions.com/dst2007 claims to be able to handle NT4 through Windows 2003 and Vista. It also includes all daylight saving changes for all countries worldwide. For companies with offices in Mexico, it also has a feature that I haven’t seen elsewhere to help admins switch to the new time zones that had to be created for Mexico for the DST2007 change.
http://www.gpxs.net/ George Karayannis

Anybody with a modest-to-large BlackBerry population struggling with OTA deployment and looking for an automated solution? I certainly don’t want it to sound like I’m pimping my company, but I haven’t seen anything avaialble in the market to help large customers manage this cumbersome process. We have a software solution that works for all Exchange 2000 and later users and provides all the functionality and reliability that the BES itself cannot provide. My contact if anyone wants more info is george dot karayannis at gpxs dot net.
http://www.gpxs.net/ George Karayannis

Anybody with a modest-to-large BlackBerry population struggling with OTA deployment and looking for an automated solution? I certainly don’t want it to sound like I’m pimping my company, but I haven’t seen anything avaialble in the market to help large customers manage this cumbersome process. We have a software solution that works for all Exchange 2000 and later users and provides all the functionality and reliability that the BES itself cannot provide. My contact if anyone wants more info is george dot karayannis at gpxs dot net.
http://www.gpxs.net George Karayannis

Anybody with a modest-to-large BlackBerry population struggling with OTA deployment and looking for an automated solution? I certainly don’t want it to sound like I’m pimping my company, but I haven’t seen anything avaialble in the market to help large customers manage this cumbersome process. We have a software solution that works for all Exchange 2000 and later users and provides all the functionality and reliability that the BES itself cannot provide. My contact if anyone wants more info is george dot karayannis at gpxs dot net.
http://www.boxtone.com/ Joel

My company has made available free software â€” BoxTone DST Expert for BlackBerry â€” as a service to the BlackBerry community. Helps BES admins monitor patch and update progress by BlackBerry user and BES.
Download is at http://www.boxtone.com/dst_expert_blackberry/
http://www.boxtone.com Joel

My company has made available free software â€” BoxTone DST Expert for BlackBerry â€” as a service to the BlackBerry community. Helps BES admins monitor patch and update progress by BlackBerry user and BES.
Download is at http://www.boxtone.com/dst_expert_blackberry/
Terryl Richardson

if you run the patch on the 7520 units is there any place on the unit that will show that the patch has been installed I have done this with the 7100I and in the options it shows that the DST patch 2007 is installed
Terryl Richardson

if you run the patch on the 7520 units is there any place on the unit that will show that the patch has been installed I have done this with the 7100I and in the options it shows that the DST patch 2007 is installed

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