Doing quite a lot of work in Visual Basic at the moment, which is distressing. I've done quite a bit with this using VBA for Excel in work (still going on that too). But I've now downloaded VB 2008 Express Edition from Microsoft and installed it on Alex's computer. Starting toying with it to develop a timer for when Alex switches it on - to try to make him turn if off after a certain amount of time. I've managed to get quite far with it in not too long at all really - to the point of being able to make the computer switch off after a specified time, while displaying a progress bar counting the time down. The plan eventually is to make it play a sound file telling Alex it's time to turn off. I may even post it here when it's done.