[Anonymouse]

Hmm...on PCs, tricky. On a UNIX network, you could probably write a script to do it. On a VAX/VMS cluster or mainframe, the sysops can access a transaction log, as everything on a VAX is logged, even keypresses. For example, if you're creating a text file and your terminal crashes, the next time you log on you can type EDIT/RECOVER filename. The editor recovers a journal file; this includes every single keypress, i.e. deletions, backspaces, cut & paste operations, page scrolling, the lot. It's fascinating to watch the cursor zipping back and forth, up and down, text appearing and disappearing; every single operation on the file is repeated exactly until it's restored to the point where the terminal crashed. You then carry on editing until you're done; the journal file is automatically deleted unless you alter the editor's default settings. There are also a variety of system functions known (for some reason) as the lexical functions that can be used for monitoring purposes, provided you have the necessary, i.e. sysop-only, privileges.

Anyway. There probably is a way to do it on a PC network, but I doubt it'll be anything but a technical solution; you'd probably need some sort of bespoke app. Possibly you could infer the level of a user's activity by checking the CPU time used by whatever task(s) they're meant to be running - in other words, if the task hasn't used much CPU time it's been left idle for a while, whereas if it's used a lot then the user is there and working with the task - but I'm not sure how you'd do that. One place you might try asking the same question is Windows Annoyances - there are a number of very knowledgeable contributors on the various forums who'll help if they can. Just post on the relevant forum, though, not on all of them; I'm assuming the terminals in question are running XP or 2000.