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Vendredi, 04 Novembre 2011 19:36

Update Your Gadgets for Daylight Saving Time

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From Wired How-To Wiki

Make sure you don't handle the time change like a luddite. Photo by Seth Anderson/Flickr/CC

Remember the days when adjusting for Daylight Saving Time involved manually dialing the minute hand on all the clocks back or forward 360 degrees? We don’t either. Nowadays, if a stranger asks if you have the time, you’re likely to reach that be-watched arm into your jacket pocket and look to your phone for the results. But owning of a plethora of time-telling-capable gadgets is likely to be accompanied by that odd stage of confusion right around Daylight Saving Time when no one seems to know what time it actually is. And even though lots of devices maintain time automatically now, it can still be overwhelming to trudge through your Settings menus trying to make sure you wake up at the right hour the next morning.

Fear not; this guide will walk you through getting a grip on Daylight Saving Time and lead you through the basic steps of configuring any device you have, just in the nick of time.

Check For Automatic Configurations

Several devices that you may own such as a smartphone or personal computer have the ability to set themselves for Daylight Saving Time automatically, provided that it is online. If you’re experiencing issues with a cellphone or desktop/laptop not updating to the time change, make sure you’ve installed all recent OS updates, and if it’s a phone, make sure it’s been synced with its host device recently. Lastly, if you’re still having trouble on a PC after you’ve tried all of these things, every OS has a section in the clock settings about connecting to an Internet time server; try refreshing your connection to that and you may find your time updated shortly after.

And remember, the US Naval Observatory Master Clock Time has the exact time, always.

Know When To Switch

Always remember clock directionality with the “Spring forward, Fall back,” saying. The spring switch always occurs on the second Sunday in March at precisely 2 a.m. when we enter Daylight Saving Time, and we return to Standard Time in fall at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November. That means, if you were watching a digital clock that auto-updated, you would see the time pass as 1:58, 1:59, 1:00 in the fall and 1:58, 1:59, 3:00 in the spring. In practical terms, that means in fall you get to sleep in an extra hour on Monday, but in the spring you’ll have to rise an hour earlier from the time schedule your body’s grown accustomed to.

Adjust Gadgets With Retrevo Manuals

So you’ve successfully updated your alarm clock and made it to work on time — congrats! (Or, too bad you missed out on the most excusable reason for being late to work ever.) Your next challenge is avoiding those heart-stopping moments when you glance at the clock on a device that hasn’t been updated and fear you’ve missed a career-defining meeting.

To avoid this scenario, make sure you update all your devices that don’t automatically update automatically, like most cars, kitchen appliances, and even some TVs and media players. Things can get a bit trickier here, especially if you’ve tossed the manual. But fear not — there’s a website called Retrevo that is home to thousands of PDF manuals for almost every kind of gadget under the sun. If you’re at wit’s end trying to navigate to your device’s time settings, it’s likely you can find the manual for it at Retrevo and look up how to change the time in a matter of minutes.

Cars

Let’s face it; car clocks can be the most frustrating clocks to change out of them all. Even when we build up the effort to tinker with it, we’re met with a confusing set of controls that we barely touch otherwise, and it’s tempting to leave it alone and just use your phone. However, there are some simple things to look for in any car that will help you rock your clock.

  • H or M keys. Some car clocks have dedicated Hour and Minute keys that can be pressed several times to cycle through the current time configuration.
  • Function keys. Certain keys serve a dual purpose, and will only do their secondary purpose if a function key is pressed beforehand. Look for a faded symbol next to the main symbol of the key, and then try to find the corresponding function key to access secondary options.
  • Seeking buttons. Depending on what mode a car stereo is in, the Seek/Skip buttons can be used to change the time instead of track if nothing is playing.

If all else fails, check your car’s manual or play around a bit, and hopefully you’ll be able to figure out how to set your clock forward an hour before you lose that hour from your day entirely.


Article by Jack Donovan, Wired.com.


This page was last modified 23:28, 4 November 2011 by howto_admin. Based on work by amyzimmerman and jyakku.

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