OK Dan ... I don't know if I can make this complicated enough for you to understand, but I'll give it one last try.
There are two kinds of people in this world: (A) Those who leave their CM15A connected to their PC all the time (as you say, "24-7"), and (B) Those who leave their CM15A
not connected to their PC all the time, but connect it when necessary to download timers and/or macros, or to set the CM15A's date and time. Based on your posts, you are clearly in the (A) group. However, many of us are in the (B) group. For several reasons, we prefer to not leave our CM15A connected to our PC all the time.
Now, we (B) group people have been (B) group people through enough years of spring and fall DST changes to
know (from our own personal experiences and from seeing these things happen with our own eyes) that the CM15A - by itself - with no connection at all to the PC - changes its own clock forward an hour and back an hour when DST changes in the spring and in the fall. It always knew when to do that. By itself.
This year, of course, the traditional dates for the start and end of DST were changed (by our own genius congressmen) so they no longer correspond to the old "first Sunday in April, last Sunday in October" rules. Microsoft provided updates for Windows XP, and AHP said that if we update our Windows operating system, then when we download our timers and macros to the CM15A, Windows will tell the CM15A when DST is supposed to start and end. So the CM15A should now know the new rules, and we (B) group people will live happily ever after.
HOWEVER ... it didn't work. We all got our Windows DST patches. We all cleared our CM15A's and downloaded our macros and timers, and set the CM15A's date/time before March 11. And then we disconnected our PC's. We all saw our Windows operating systems change their times on the correct dates, and not on the old dates. But ... the CM15A still acts like it thinks the DST start date was supposed to be April 1. The evidence of this is that on March 11 the CM15A didn't move its clock ahead, so we all had to connect our PC's and set the CM15A's clock manually. And on April 1 we all saw the timers firing an hour early, because the CM15A
did move its clock ahead an hour. So we all had to connect our PC's again, and set the clock back where it should be.
After seeing on this forum that I was not the only one who had this problem, I called AHP customer support, (and waited on hold for quite a while), and they were already well aware of the problem. Leroy told me they were working on a fix, and it should be included in the next version, and available within a couple of weeks.
You don't see the problem because - again - you are a member of the (A) group. With your PC connected all the time, your CM15A gets its time updated from Windows often enough that it doesn't have to think about when DST starts and ends. It just depends on Windows to tell it what time it is.
So ... to settle the "argument" ... I'd say "everybody's right"
. It just depends if you're a member of the (A) group or the (B) group.
Jeff