March 11, the new date on which Daylight Saving Time (DST) will take effect in the U.S. and a growing number of other countries, is fast approaching. And Microsoft is working overtime to get the message out that users need to patch a bunch of their Microsoft products, from Exchange Server, to Windows Mobile, in order to head off date-change headaches.
There's one bit of DST fine print that Microsoft isn't sharing quite so readily, however. (I discovered it by wading through a slide deck that Microsoft is providing to analysts to get them up-to-speed on the company's DST guidance.)
Page 20 of the deck mentions that Microsoft has decided, due to the number of customers and products affected by the DST 2007 changes, to "amend the regular Extended Hotfix support program." If you need to patch older Microsoft products that already have moved from "Mainstream" to "Extended" support phase, Microsoft will give you a chance to buy the hotfixes you need — for $4,000.
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