I would like to have a more insistent reminder for tasks and calendar appointments. Preferably more like an alarm clock that has to be physically turned off rather than just a quick tinkle and it goes away. Anybody have any suggestions?

SPB Time is great. Besides several alarm clocks, which you can use existing or your own WAV files, it has countdown timers and stopwatch. And skinable clock faces, too.
Lots of options make this a good program.

This freeware has been very helpful to me with this problem on x50v and WM2000SE; I don't know how well it works on WM5.

http://www.apsoftsystems.com/apreminderplus/index.htm

Same here, works well with WM5.

 

Thanks. I'm going to check out both.

Have you tried it yet? working well?