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Get ready for an extra hour of daylight this weekend. The switch to Daylight Saving Time has been moved up three weeks this year.

There have been some concerns that the earlier time change could cause minor computer problems because clocks won't reset on their own.

Chris Stegner with ETC ComputerLand in Quincy says it's not exactly the doomsday drama of the Y2K computer bug.

If anything, potential problems will be more of an annoyance than a disaster.

Stegner says most Microsoft users should be fine; the software giant already has sent automatic downloads to take care of the potential problem.

You can also go to the Microsoft website to see if your computer is ready.

If you have an older computer, you'll have to manually change its internal clock--not only this weekend, but again in April when it's programmed to reset.

The problem will show up not only in computers, but in things like some digital watches and clocks.

Most cell phones will automatically make the time switch, thanks to your service provider.

Same story for your cable set-top box, but you'll have to manually change the time on your VCR.

Daylight Saving Time is designed to save energy.

As part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the spring time change was pushed up three weeks as part of Congress' plan to conserve electricity.

Studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that we trim the entire country's electricity usage by about 1 percent each day with Daylight Saving Time.

The idea of saving time has been around for a few centuries. Benjamin Franklin gets credit with first proposing the idea of Daylight Saving Time in 1784. He thought more daylight would save on candles. Sound familiar?

The first use of Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. was during World War I in an effort to conserve resources for the war effort, but the time change proved to be so unpopular that it was repealed after just two years.

It came back in 1942 when America went to war again. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time. It stayed that way for three years.

But Daylight Saving Time as we now know it didn't become the law of the land until 1966. It was changed slightly in 1986 in another energy-saving move when President Reagan signed a law changing Daylight Saving Time from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday of the month.

And now 21 years later, we've changed time again. Adding three weeks in the spring and one more in the fall is expected to save an estimated 300,000 barrels of oil a year.

Besides saving energy, here are two more benefits of Daylight Saving Time. It reduces traffic crashes because you're driving more in daylight, and it's been shown to prevent various crimes, which are more common in darkness than in light.

So why do we change time at 2 a.m.? For one, most people are asleep. It's also the time when the fewest trains are running, and there's very little inconvenience for bars and restaurants. Plus, by not making the change at midnight, it prevents today changing ever so briefly back to yesterday.

And here's a common mistake that many people and calendars make: the actual name is Daylight Saving Time, NOT Daylight SavingS Time. The way to remember it is, we are saving daylight, so it is singular and not plural.

And despite all the reasons we spring forward, there's one common denominator that affects us all--we lose an hour of sleep.

So remember, before you go to bed Saturday night, move your clocks up one hour and be sure to double check your electronics the next morning to see if they made the switch.

And in the fall, we'll change our clocks back one week later, on Nov. 4.

That means it will still be daylight when you take your kids trick-or-treating this Halloween.