Thanks to a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 you will be setting your clocks ahead an hour this Sunday - three weeks earlier than usual. DST will last longer than before, too, with clocks not retreating an hour until Sunday, Nov. 4, a month later.

But this is no "Y2K," when tech-types worried because some computers weren't programmed to recognize dates after Jan. 1, 2000. And the irony is that in a society even more computerized today, it will be technology that comes to the rescue.

Utah tech gurus agree: March 11 won't go down in history as any more of a crisis than our usual biannual, DST-related nuisances of being late or early to meetings, work or church.

PCLaptops founder Dan Young says the switch should be a simple matter of vigilance. For the 90-plus percent of companies and individual computer users out there using the Windows operating system, Microsoft will do the heavy lifting.

"Microsoft has sent out an auto update feature that should patch [fix] computers running Windows XP . . . or later," Young says. "The problem is many people with older systems, or those who don't have the autopatch [activated]."

Such Windows users also can disable their PCs' automatic DST feature and set the time themselves, or download the patch manually from Microsoft for Windows and other time-sensitive products, such as Outlook.

"There might be some hiccups and headaches [with] scheduling for some people who haven't fixed [their electronics], but I don't think the world is going to end," Young concludes.

Apple, and in Utah the Unix-based SCO Group's programs and Novell's Suse Linux operating system, also are offering free patches for users to download - as are most makers of PDAs, smartphones and other gadgets through their Web sites.

At Altiris, the Lindon-based Web analytics company, senior product manager Michael Hopkins says his company and its corporate customers - among them such tech giants as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM and Intel - are ready.

Altiris "patch management" software automatically downloads a myriad of program patches directly to customers, including the latest fixes for Sunday's time switch.

"This problem doesn't even come close to Y2K, when we had to fix millions of [computer] code," Hopkins says. "My gut feeling about the DST change is that we won't really even notice it."

If anyone should be expected to be ready for the DST changeover, it would be FranklinCovey, the Salt Lake City-based time management company.

"Since we are a planning company, you could say we planned for that," deadpans spokeswoman Debra Lund. "All our calendars for this year were printed ahead of time to note the change."

FranklinCovey's planning software, working with its operating system choice, Windows, will also automatically update.

"We still have the same amount of hours, though. The idea is to plan your time well, whether in a paper planner or with software," Lund advises.

bmims@sltrib.com