This Sunday marks the start of a changed Daylight Savings time for Victoria, and most of the eastern Australian States, bringing them all into line.
That means putting all your clocks forward one hour, but What does it mean for your computer?

On the Windows side, Microsoft have released a patch to reconfigure Windows to the right dates and times, and have in fact created a web page dedicated to the Australian time zone changes. The basic steps are:

for Windows XP:

1. Click on Start (Windows icon in the bottom left hand corner of your screen) > Control Panel > Programs and Features > click on ‘View installed updates’ (in left hand navigation bar)

2. Scroll down and look for “Update for Microsoft Windows (KB951072)”. If you have Automatic Updates enabled, this update should have been installed in August 2008.

For Windows Vista:

1. Click on Start (Windows icon in the bottom left hand corner of your screen) > Control Panel > Programs and Features > click on ‘View installed updates’ (in left hand navigation bar)

2. Scroll down and look for “Update for Microsoft Windows (KB951072)”. If you have Automatic Updates enabled, this update should have been installed in August 2008.

If the update is installed and your Date, Time and Time Zone are set correctly, everything should be fine.

Apple has released patches for the 2 most recent releases of Mac OSX (Tiger 10.4 & Leopard 10.5) that should have automatically installed on machines if they are kept up to date. Other items that may need to be patched include Microsoft Office for Mac which can be updated by going to the Help menu in any office Application and clicking Check for Updates.

Servers of all sorts also need to be checked, If you have any problems relating to daylight savings, please call the office on 1300 TECH DR (1300 832 437) or drop us a note at daylightsavings@techdoctor.com.au

Have a Great Weekend!

Q: I just need some help with why I’d be up to 80% of my Broadband use for the 2nd month in a row. What type of things use a lot? Today I’ve not used it … but it’s used 3%. All I’ve had open is my blog with me doing nothing and the local weather, which does update regularly – so that may do it.

Also, does uploading to my blog use much? Or does checking out other people’s blogs use much? That I do do a bit. Just let me know when you can so I can try to work out what to do.

And does Skype use much? …. or emails? .. hopefully last one – if I leave website open where the pictures are constantly changing – am i using up broadband?

A: The answer to all the above is that everything that comes to your screen from the internet has to be downloaded through your broadband pipe and counts against your download limit (unless you have some free services provided by your ISP.) The big question is how much.

A typical blog page can quite big, often containing big photos and video, and can be as large as 500Kb, while a fairly simple page like the weather will be as small as 50Kb. The problem is that if that weather page is reloaded every 5 minutes, that totals 600Kb/hr. Pages with pictures that change (like ads) are similarly high

Checking emails is probably only a few Kb every check (usually 5 minutes) plus the size of any emails downloaded. Skype is quite light for text, audio/video chat is approx 3-16Kb/sec.

Uploading things is quite different, and varies from ISP to ISP. Most ADSL ISPs do not charge anything for uploads, but I believe Bigpond, Optus & iiNet all count uploads towards the monthly cap

I had a couple of interesting questions posed to me today that I thought were worth sharing. Both related to backup type storage media sizes. The first was about memory sticks, and the assumption, (rather than a question) that a memory stick is bigger than a DVD. The second was asking how much info a CD can hold.

So I thought it was timely to add a quick chart of the current state of affairs in storage:

before we start, some rough idea of the size of some things:

and here are some things to put all that data onto, along with some rough prices:

There are lots of reasons you cant directly compare each of those items, like speed, size, durability and rewritability, which means that some media types are better than others for different purposes.

For example: 75 DVDs will hold the same amount of information as a 320Gb Hard Disk, for a fair bit less money, but you can only write to the DVD once.

Today, the open source project OpenOffice.org celebrates its 7th birthday. Founded by Sun Microsystems on October 13th, 2000, continues to experience tremendous growth. The project recently counted 104 million downloads from its website, and downloads have been increasing since the release of OpenOffice.org 2.3 last month. It is widely considered the most important open source productivity suite and one of the largest open source projects.

We get asked the big screen display question all the time, so which is best?

Like everything computerised, the answer is: it depends. Each has strengths and weaknesses and suits different audiences.

LCD

• Smaller, therefore, cheaper
• Brighter, much better in a well lit room or during the day
• No chance of Burn In
• Physically lighter, easy to mount for the DIY
• Uses less energy

Plasma

• Bigger
• Higher contrast ratio, the colour really pops out at you
• Handles fast action like Sports, Action Movies & Games without visible tearing or smearing
• Needs a fairly dark room, and be subject to Burn In if the same image is displayed for a long time.

If you want a TV in the living room to watch during the day without closing all the curtains, go LCD.

If you want the big Home Theatre Experience, go for a Plasma, or a DLP Projector.

Microsoft have released an Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. This allows Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to open documents saved in Office 2007 new Office Open XML Formats not to be confused with Open Office.org‘s Open Document Format for Office Applications with is a ratified International Standard