[X4U] Time zone System Preferences bug (MacBook Pro/Boot Camp)

[Jim Robertson]

I have Boot Camp (latest public beta version) installed on my MacBook Pro.
If I boot into Windows, WinXP finds my 802.11g hardware and connects me to
the internet. However, if I restart in the Mac OS and don't turn on Airport,
in the Mac OS my system clock somehow gets reset to Greenwich Mean Time.
Once I get internet access, the Mac is able to synchronize its clock with
the time servers, but there's no alert to the user at boot-up that the time
server isn't available. I can understand that having such an alert pop up
over and over would be irritating for those times that internet access isn't
available at all, but the behavior could be improved by at least alerting
the user that no internet connection is available if the user TRIES to
resynchronize the clock using a server (it didn't occur to me that the
reason I had to reset the clock manually even though I'd selected my
preconfigured WiFi "location" in the Apple menu was because I didn't really
have access to the time server - that is until I tried to collect email and
was reminded by my email client that I didn't have access to the mail server
(I don't think that one can configure the "Location" under the Apple Menu to
toggle Airport on and off).

I've read traffic about differences between the way the Mac OS and Windows
determine the current time causing disparities in clocks between the two
OS's, but I didn't think until today about how the way the two OS's handle
activity of the WiFi hardware interacts with that. I'm hoping someone at
Apple reads this list so that this part of the user interface can get
cleaned up. Is there someone I should report this to directly?

Jim Robertson
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