I hate this thing anyway, but maybe you can help me hate it less.

August 17, 2007 9:05 AM

My boss' Palm Treo 750 is just plain screwed-up, and this means my task for the day is fixing it. I have never laid eyes on this thing before. Help!

The problem seems to be that both his laptop and the Treo 750 (a new one, which recently went to Europe) are set on the right time zone (central). But every time hy syncs his appointments in his calendar from his Treo, the appointment is moved to Eastern time. Every time he syncs from his laptop with a new appointment, the appointment is moved to Mountain time.

He's had this problem before on his previous Treo (via Sprint) and downloaded a patch to fix it. Before the trip to Europe, he switched to the dreaded AT&T and bought the new 'smartphone' so he could still contact the office. He can't find the patch or the time to even look for it. I can't find it anywhere with the other Microsoft downloads.

Someone with experience please send a little advice my way! Thanks in advance.

posted by mitzyjalapeno to technology (5 comments total)

I don't have any hands-on with this phone or this problem, but all my google-fu points to a daylight savings patch (click for patch!). Worked for this guy, who described the same symptoms.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:41 AM on August 17, 2007

Have you tried calling AT&T support?
posted by rhizome at 10:18 AM on August 17, 2007

Is he using Palm Desktop software? If so, it might be this issue. I e-mailed Palm to complain that their devices marketed at mobile professionals cannot handle real-world business travel. Their response:

We would have escalated your issue to our Level 2 Support here at Palm and have recieved an update from them. I have confirmed that the Palm™ Desktop does not support time zones. So if you change the time zone on your laptop, the dates would shift. I would suggest that you try synchronizing with Outlook® as I believe that Outlook supports time zones. Please do email usback if you have any updates or question on this issue.

A lot of my friends' birthdays ended up on the wrong day due to this bug, and I never found a simple way to fix that. I now try not to sync when I am outside my home time zone, as ridiculous as that is.

To fix your current problem, first progressively try the various severity of reset in this document. Make sure everything is backed up before a hard reset. It deletes everything on the device.
posted by grouse at 10:29 AM on August 17, 2007

I have tried calling AT&T, but of course, they would give me no info, because I am not my boss. He was at a meeting when I first posted the question, but now he's back and trying to figure out if he did sync when he was travelling. Thanks guys!
posted by mitzyjalapeno at 11:02 AM on August 17, 2007

I have a treo 700. I am assuming your boss wants to put an appointment on the calendar at, say, noon, and have it stay at noon even when the timezone the treo is located in changes.

This might help:
Start the calender app on the Treo, go to preferences, and uncheck "New events use time zones".
posted by yohko at 10:22 AM on August 18, 2007