Most important "tweak" - Time

Nate Adcock has taken over our monthly blog topic. The idea is the first of each month one or more of us post on a particular topic that Nate suggests or coordinates. By midyear, when we get our new site up, we will highlight this feature and make it more obvious. If you look back over the past year at first of month (we skipped a few months starting Fall), there was some great stuff posted. This month's topic is on most important "tweak". "Tweak" can mean futzing with the system registry or simply making a settings change. I like the topic, since the "tweaks" can be simple but have a good effect.

Here is my example of a simple but important settings change that makes my phone more usable, followed by another tweak that used to work, but no more -- and I am looking for an alternative. Both concern time. I've been using a Mobile Planet-provided HTC TyTN II (AKA AT&T Tilt) for the past 4 months. My most often used application over the years is to check the time! In that regard, I really like the TyTN II's large digital clock on the home screen -- apparently many other people also don't wear watches. However, on the TyTN II, I missed seeing the time on the top title bar that was on other Pocket PC's I've used. I often would have to Start Menu ! Today just to see the time. The other day I was fooling around with settings between flights on the way home. Under Settings | System | Clock & Alarms there is a "More" tab, that somehow I never noticed. With a simple check in the box, the time is now on all screens with title bar.

Speaking of time, there is another fundamental "tweak" that no longer works with the smartphone. Maybe someone can help. Appointment setting on phones can be very frustrating for the time-zone traveler. Suppose I am flying to California. I leave Monday at 10AM and return leaving Thursday at 2PM. I am in the U.S. Central Time Zone so West coast is two hour earlier. Say I put Mon 10AM and Thur 2PM in my appointments as soon as I learn times. Then I fly to California and change the time on my smartphone by changing the time zone in Clock & Alarm settings to the West Coast Time Zone. Once I do that, when I check Thursday, my flight leaves at 4PM (the Central Time Zone time)!

The work around (tweak) that used to work on my Pocket PC is simply just to leave the time zone as Central (GMT -6), and move the time back a couple of hours in California. However, my phone got smarter! (I believe this is right -- my memory is a little muddled - jetlag, old age). I was recently in Europe. Following my usual method, I left the phone at GMT -6 and set the clock ahead 7 hours. However, after a little while the phone reset the time to the proper GMT -6 time -- seven hours earlier.

So, with this smarter phone either the appointments are off or the time is off. Anybody have solution?