Of course the only danger that I see is that after installing SQL Express for that purpose, the customer will assume that they're getting an conversion to the SQL version of the software for free (these are the same customers that were assuming that when they upgraded their computers from 16-bit OS to 32-bit OS that it entitled them for free upgrade from 16-bit application software to 32-bit -- their argument was "it's all Windows anyway isn't it?").

Of course if it eventually comes to installing something on the server, then I might as well build a simple COM+ DLL to provide an interface to query the time from the server. In the future if the need arises for further extenasions would be required I can just update the DLL to add required fuctionality..