Did you ever notice...

That on a fresh install of Windows, the time zone setting always defaults to GMT -8?

As in California...

REDMOND California....?

Or is it just North American copies of Windows?

 

Just maybe our man Gates has a thing for the name Redmond,......... MS headquarters Redmond, Wa., but more than likely just a West Coast thing, programmers living in Washington State easier to set everything up on their time zone would be my guess, but it would be interesting to here from our Aussie and European geeks as to the "Default Time" of their "Windows"

 

Hmm... I've not done an XP install for some time now - I seem to remember it being -8 though.

 

Did one recently on my son's and never though anything of it...just thought it auto set to the CORRECT time HAHA

 

My thoughts exactly!
I dunno... just struck me as funny. Everyone but Californian residents (including, as you mentioned, MS HQ) has to take that extra step.

Microsoft Mentality...

 

Honestly... how are you supposed to automatically work out what time zone your in during an install? Unless you've got some kind of exotic GPS type device built into the motherboard, or fancy wardialing your local exchange to work out what country your in there isn't much of a choice.

And there is a discrete set of results to choose, so why not choose the developers own zone?

 

Or why not choose UT (Universal Time aka GMT)?

 

Actually Mada I believe the phrase "Microsoft Mentality" is a no no at MS, and has been replaced with the phrase "Microsoft Dyslexia"

 

Oregon works ok with the default too, as does AZ, Washington State...dunno what your problem is

 

Right!
And goldfish, of course, you are right. Like I said, its just a little thing that strikes me as funny.

 

Yep it's always GMT-8.

The other one that gets to me on websites is that when you are asked for your location USA is top of the list, I have to scroll through the world to get to UK (we used to own the world)

 

I'm with you Mada,I say we storm the place and get all copies changed to no default time zone

Californians windows installs have been too easy for too long!

 

Actually the whole country picker thing on websites DOES annoy me. Especially since USA is at the top, and even though alphabetically UK should be right next to it - it's right at the bottom. Have they ever heard of the selected attribute?

 

All the defaults for Win 95, 98, 98SE, XP flavours have been for GMT -8 here in Aust., and the default languages, etc, for US English. Vista's a bit different, like Halo said.

 

The only real time is Greenwich Mean Time