Blame Bill G.  Meeting requests I get usually explicitly state GMT, although they are actualy BST.

- Steve

In states that practice daylight savings, Standard time is daylight savings time.  In Arizona and part of Indiana, Standard time stays the same year round with the subsequent savings in aggravation, confusion and sleep loss.  

Sorry, I cannot place the blame with Bill. These are not Outlook appointments, but simple text emails stating the date and time, often with attachments repeating the same time information.  

Ok.  My company insists on using "Outlook" to book meetings, so I assumed that was reponsible (as it always is for me, a M$ hater and non-user).

- Steve

In the US, standard time is not daylight time. Standard time remains fixed with GMT. Daylight time is also fixed with GMT. Prevailing time shifts from one to the other twice a year. For example, PDT and MST are the same, both being GMT-7. http://www.fs.fed.us/raws/book/primer/time.shtml
 

I think the whole world should use GMT, since Greenwich is, by definition, the centre of the world.

So what if darkness arrives at different times in different places.  At least meetings will work.

- Steve

Apparently that is the Chinese philosophy.
Well, not that Greenwich is the centre of the world, China is (hence the country's name and the original character meant Central Kingdom), but that time zones don't exist and thus the country has just one time across its entire width. (GMT +8)
Thus it is very much the case that:
"So what if darkness arrives at different times in different places.  At least meetings will work."

And a good idea for the UK too.
Let us drop all this summer time nonsense. Kids don't walk to school any more (the alleged reason for this nonsense), mum drives them in the 4x4 with rally lights across the front, so what does it matter if it is dark in the mornings when they go to school. Besides, this is mostly a benefit for the northern peoples of the UK.

 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

Indiana has now gone to daylight savings time where before it had always stayed on standard time.  Only in the northwest corner near Chicago do the emulate the time Central time zone.

You should all get a taste of Australian politics if you think you have a problem.  I live in the state of Queensland, and we are the only state in eastern Australia which does not use daylight time.  It makes for lots of business inconvenience in the southeast corner of the state where most of the population lives, but the other parts of the state have been successful in preventing daylight time from happening.  We could well have a split, as Queensland is big, three times the size of Texas.  But we are a bit backward, with some people still thinking that more daylight will fade the curtains and confuse the cows.

I live in Arizona and thus have the benefit of never re-setting my watch. However, my relatives live in Pacific, Mountain and Central time zone states, all utilizing Daylight Savings Time. In addition, my work involves coordination with other engineers in my company working in offices from Portland, Oregon to Topsham, Maine. It really takes some effort to keep it all straight. I use the following link to help with the time zones:

http://www.thetimenow.com/

BigH:

Indiana has not gone to Daylight Savings...It's gone to Clinton.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

World Time from PawPrint allows you to set up as many clocks as you like and customise their settings.
If you are on Win XP or later the synchronisation isn't necessary but it also runs on Win 98se where it is.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

... my info generally comes from /usr/lib/tztab on my HP-UX workstation.  Not sure what I'll do after 2038 though.

- Steve

Msquared48 - So it appears - but only because the Republicans voted for her.  When I was on home leave in January, the "negative" Clinton attitude of the people in the area my mum lives - impressively heavy. And didn't Limbaugh urge Hoosiers to vote for her?

To deflect from political discussion back to the original question...

Yes, it is often an error.  Best to check and see what they meant.  People get to thinking of "EST" not to mean "Eastern Standard Time" but "Eastern Time" and forget that in some times of year they have to say "EDT" instead.  I'm pretty sure I've done this myself.  Kind of like writing the previous year on checks for several months into the new year, back when I still wrote checks.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

You could always take a leaf out of the military's books - all of NATO uses Zulu time, which is GMT with no daylight savings, no matter where in the world you are (see the film Independence Day for an example!). So you don't get the embarassing call - "Sorry we were hours late with the air cover, we thought it was PST not EST - did you lose many men?"

And also, it's really irritating now that the US has decided to change to Daylight Savings a week or 2 earlier than everyone else.  Why, for heaven's sake?

Hg,

Like I said, attempts to clarify met with bafflement. Finally I told the last person what time it was when I sent the message. Luckily she was in the same time zone on the same shift to daylight time. Said she thought she was on standard time. They covered all this in elementary school in my day.

Scotty,

References to GMT were the ones that were met with bafflement. Windows is not much help, since my computer says we are in the GMT-8 time zone when we are really running at GMT-7 for the season.

The only reason I can keep it straight is because I used to live in a country where they called it "summer clock".  But I have to stop and think which half of the year I'm in every time.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

In China, it is the same time zone across the entire country - Beijing time.  We lived out in the far west - so if a Chinese told you a time, you would go by the Beijing time; if the Uyghur told you the time, you'd have to try to remember to use "local" time (2 hours behind Beijing).  Led to some pretty interesting parties (either you showed up early or you missed it altogether!).