Palm OS/WinMo Software

[#1]

This year daylight savings time is starting and ending on new dates, at least in Canada and the US. Is there any software patch I need to install on my T|X so that the change is automatic? I don't remember having to manually update the time on my T|s every 6 months, so something must be happening automatically...

Thanks.

Post relates to: Palm TX

[ Not everyone is aware of this issue, so I've taken the liberty of floating this thread as a "sticky" for all readers to see and make adjustments now.  Thanks to electro for posting, and to AlanG for his excellent article. ]

Message Edited by smkranz on 02-12-200710:30 AM

[#2]

You can change Daylight Savings Time settings yourself in World Clock.

Select your City, Edit List, Edit, make changes, OK.

[#3]

Hello electro.

As far as I know, there is no patch available for any of the current Palm OS handhelds available from Palm. There is a rumor that Palm is working on an update, but I have no inside information on the status of such a project.

In the mean time, there is a method for manually updating the DST rules for the city you've selected in the Date & Time settings. Check out this article for my directions.

Alan G

[#4]

This only fixes the problem for the one time zone.  If you travel a lot and are constantly updating your time zone in your palm to match the zone you are in you would have to update it for all the potential time zones you will travel to.  There has to be a more global change that can be made.  Has anyone found one?

[#5]

I think the depth of this problem is not being well understood.

Many timezones have changed their daylight rules. Some timezones (Western Australia) have started using DST where they did not previously. In other cases, such as Mexico, they did NOT change their rules, so now there are different rules for Pacific Mexico vs Pacific U.S. and Canada. (I don't know if all these points matter, but it is hard to tell, since the Tungsten E2 doesn't give me an easy way to inspect all of the entries in these databases.)

Since the Palm stores not only zones, but also cities, this means that many cities (look in World Clock) need updating - some with rules, some with zones.

Furthermore, Palm must be addressing this, otherwise every device sold after March 10 will start showing odd timezone behaviours.

It appears that many of the records are found under the creator "locL", particularly the databases locLTimeZoneDB, locLDefLocationDB, and locLCusLocationDB. And - interestingly - on my Tungsten E2, I can't find any ROM DB with enough records to account for all the cities. If  "TimeZone" and "DefLocation" are both RAM loaded on a hard reset, then the solution for those of us with relatively current devices (and for Palm) would simply be to get someone with a new, updated device and have them share the appropriate database - with a warning that a hard reset will require re-applying the change.

Older devices are in a tough spot, although one would hope that Palm could easily back port configuration settings. (Hope.... hmmm, what a concept.)

If Palm drops the ball on this entirely (witness the Search function on the E2!) then our best route might be to extract all the entries from "TimeZone" and "DefLocation", and create new two new PDBs that reflect the correct settings. Searching on the db names doesn't turn up any public documentation on the db formats either.

I haven't even touched the question of what happens to sync'd appointments in the 'delta period' between March 11 and April 1 (the "new" DST zone). That would be because I don't know.

Not a pleasant situation here - especially with only 23 days left to go before the change hits.

[#6]

Yes.  Palm needs to step up to the plate and fix the daylight saving time issue. This is not a trivial matter. 

The fact that we carry our schedules with us all the time [on our Palm devices] shows that being in on time is important to us.  People depend on having the correct time. 

[#7]

There's not going to be an easy workaround for this issue. Right now the choices are to either edit each city individually, changing four fields on two different screens for each city, or to wait for someone to write software to automate this process. Even if you go and edit all the cities individually, this only solves the problem for World Clock. Other applications such as WorldMate maintain their own list of cities. There too the cities must be edited individually. It would make much more sense (so it will likely never happen) to simply associate each city with a time zone and set the DST rules at the time zone level. This would mean only having to change 5 entries instead of hundreds.

I think this issue kind of snuck up on everyone, even though it's been known for over a year that the time zone rules were changing. Microsoft just released it's patch for the time zone rules very recently. I don't know about Apple and the Macs, perhaps they were more on the ball? And Palm, well Palm seems to have dropped the ball entirely. I can't find anything on their site even referencing the upcoming change, with the exception of these few forum threads.

Looking at where the data resides in the Palm itself, it is the "locL" files referenced earlier in the thread. My 700p has 155 cites listed, and the locLDefLocationDB has 155 records. There are 48 I've added to the list, and 48 records in locLCustLocationDB. I'll have to dig deeper, but it looks like to truly fix this will involve not only updating the cities that have been configured, but also the settings for the time zones and the default, unconfigured cities as well.

Palm, if you're reading these, this would be a good time to do something. I can't imagine it would take a good programmer all that long to write an app to update these records. Perhaps you could slow your frantic rush to Palm OS 6* and spare a developer or two for this? Please?

Nick

*It's a joke, son, a joke! - Foghorn Leghorn

[#8]

What about my Lifedrive, is the Palm Desktop going to throw it off every time I get an appointment? And then when I synchronize with Outlook and HotSync sets my Lifedrive time, will it be to the correct settings, or is it just validating I have EST set, and then there goes my clock?

This post pertains to Lifedrive

[#9]

Why would anyone need to make manual updates if they are receiving time from the carrier's network? If Sprint, Cingular, ect have their time set correct (i'm sure they will, many cell phone users out there, i dont see a need for this.

[#10]

Any new news on a Palm Patch, or are they going to be the normal crappy company they are and not release one? Palm will be dead in a year. Long live HTC... seriously though, what about the devices that you can't change the timezone for. I know my boss still uses a IIIx or something like that. Don't ask me why, but he just does. You can't change when DST starts and stops on that device. Is Palm going to leave users out to dry with this? This IS something that is very important, just telling people to manually change their settings is a crappy answer to a real issue...