The clocks went back a few hours ago as winter sets in. Over the last few years, more and more of my electronic devices have changed back on their own. I thought it might be interesting to see which devices had updated without manual intervention this time around.

Devices that wound back automatically?

A few years ago, Windows XP didn’t seem to update daylight saving time automatically for me, but Vista seems to be doing it perfectly. Interestingly, a few days ago, it reminded me the clocks would be going back on the dialog that is shown if you click the clock on the task bar.

As usual, my Nokia mobile phones had no problem, and both the Cisco and Snom VoIP phones also updated without any manual intervention, although I don’t know if that’s because they both synchronise with time from the server or because they know to change.

Devices that showed mixed results

The Sky box automatically updated however the Sony TV which it is plugged into did not. The Sony TVs do allow you to set up the time zone which was set to GMT and select automatic updating of daylight saving time, but the time was still out for some reason. I had problems setting this to BST before.

It would have been interesting to check what the electronic programme guide on the Sky box said prior to the change, i.e. whether it correctly showed the 01:00 to 02:00 a second time. It would appear that at least on the My Sky website, they are still running in BST, so probably the system needs manual re-setting at Sky.

A BT (pstn) phone it would appear doesn’t update automatically, but it will re-sync the time each time a phone call comes in (assuming Caller ID is enabled) and this effectively resets the time as soon as the first call is received after the clocks change.

Devices that needed manual resetting

I was a bit surprised to see the latest generation of Canon EOS Digital Cameras not update the time automatically. As expected, my old and trusted pager as well as an old fax machine (with Internet connectivity I should however add) didn’t wind the clock back automatically. Again another Sony digital TV exhibited the same problem.

I do wonder how long it will be until we don’t even notice when the clocks change.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 5:18 am and is filed under general.blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.