Its a jungle out there. Can't find a free countdown timer, or one that's worth the $20 or $25 offered. Please help.

I'd be happy to try whipping something up for you...I recently wrote an alarm clock in VB.NET, so I don't imagine it would be too difficult to turn that idea around into a countdown.

Here are two timer sidebar gadgets:

Sphere Timer
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.asp...ae-32aae1724373

Egg Timer
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.asp...51-a279b9b874b5

Two alarm clocks one free the other $
http://www.geocities.com/vinodtandon/cac/
http://www.ornj.net/citrus/

A count down timer is rather basic. What you want to happen once the count ends is could mean something. A versatile program that I use at times is Poweroff. Poweroff is freeware. It does more then just handling the PC power functions as it can show just a message, run a program etc. Some details can be found here.