(29) - The DST on/off control is a superb idea, I wish it was more widespread. Of all the many time-keeping objects I have to reset, the only ones that support the simple DST option are my Palm, and an inexpensive wall-socket timer that I bought at a hardware store.

And then there’s a third category, sort-of in between. These are like clock-radios (plus an iPod dock) and tend to have lots of unclearly-marked controls, different on each one. So finding the time-set method and rolling the time ahead or back by an hour (or on some, ahead by 23 hours, ugh) is puzzling and tedious. BUT most of these have a small two-position switch, labelled something like “DST” and with the two settings of the switch labelled something like “+” and “-”. It just moves the displayed hour ahead or back by one hour, just what is wanted at DST day! That’s such a convenience, I can almost forgive the engineers / designers for making the controls otherwise so complex and obscure.

I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist, it’s just that the practical realities are not as good as the original theory. Daylight Saving Time made much more sense in the first half of the twentieth century, when a larger fraction of energy expenditures was used for lighting, and before so many time-dependent systems became interwoven. This was especially true during the two world wars, where energy resources were very limited.

With modern computer technology, everything could (theoretically) be controlled by a single master clock, but the reality is that we have a multitude of separate, competing systems (just flip through all your cable TV stations, and compare the differences in the clocks displayed), and not everything is or can be connected.

In Europe, there is a radio transmitter that provides synchronous time information, and many clocks and even watches use that signal to adjust to DST automatically (and the TV stations are all exactly in sync). However, many battery operated wall clocks do not have this feature, and most plug-in clock radios still use the old method of synchronizing to the 50/60 Hz power cycle. Most video recorders still need to be set by hand, as do many computers, Internet notwithstanding. Your cell phone may switch automatically, but mine does not, and the base station for my (quite modern) cordless house phone doesn’t either.

This is why I have come to believe that the primary benefit of DST is that it makes us check our clocks twice a year, or as Lola (@21) mentioned, our smoke detectors.

Bill, I am not old enough to remember that. I am 22.

Think of the kids, you guys! Has anyone checked to see if more kids get hurt when it gets dark earlier? Then again… I guess kids don’t play outside anymore.

And, as a kid, I hated war time because all the fun stuff occured after dark (but I had a particularly misspent (but enjoyable) youth).

Yes, it’s unpleasant to come home in the dark. But it’s equally hard to get up in the dark. As others have pointed out, there is a limited supply of sunlight hours, whatever end you plan to take them from.
Yes, I can (and do) turn on lights. But (1) that sort of defeats the “energy savings” point, and (2) that means waking to the alarm and turning on the light, instead of being gently stirred by the gradual sunlight. It’s a shock to the system.

My softball season would be impossible without daylight savings time. That hour of daylight would be wasted in the morning. I suppose we could convince every workplace, school, TV station, etc. to shift its schedule one hour earlier during the summer, but it seems a lot easier to shift all the clocks an hour later.

Though I can see how people in Michigan would find DST silly.