My compliments to Microsoft on the way that they have handled the Daylight Savings changeover in New Zealand.

It is bloody important that they took a small market seriously enough to roll out important changes to their customer base in a timely fashion, and whats more, automatically.

Whilst I am a bit of a technology geek, and I earn a good living from being one, these days I just want computers to work at the OS and vendor application level. There is more than enough work to do at our customer application level. Microsoft have succeeded in this in this instance.

I don't live in NZ any more, but I can see that my families computers back home have rolled over and my work desktop PC here reflects the NZ changeover even though I am not in NZ. I have no doubt that the SQL and Server instances have also been patched to roll over. I bought a Windows Mobile phone the other day (with some hesitation) but I see that after applying a patch it recognises NZ made appointments correctly in my timezone.

I challenge other vendors (Nokias, Apples, Oracles) to do the same. It isn't good enough to simply post a webpage hidden in your support section that says a patch won't be released in time, and as a workaround turn your clock forwards. This creates havoc in applications. In todays international business environment, that isn't bloody good enough. Well done Microsoft.