Here's Vista desktop with no sign of SwitchCursor apart from the little yellow and black arrow icon in the Taskbar Information area at the bottom right of the screen.

Although we're showing you SwitchCursor in Vista, you can do the same thing in XP.

We'll do a simple task and change the desktop picture. This involves right-clicking the desktop, choosing Personalize from the popup menu and then picking a new picture.

Press the switch and up pop the wires (the lines that cross the screen and meet at the pointer) and a Button Bar. The active button is highlighted.

The default SwitchCursor setting we're using here is Auto cycle, Switch select, so just wait until the right-click button is highlighted and press the switch again.

The item we want is at the bottom of the list - naturally - so select first the Move Down button to get to the bottom of the list and then the Move Right button for final positioning.

Pressing the switch after the move has started will stop the action.

The movement can be set to speed up after a short time. If this happens, click once to slow as you near the target, then a second time to stop.

All these settings are adjustable in the Configurations Editor.

When the horizontal wire is over the Personalize item choose the Single-click button from the bar.

This combination of Move and Click actions is doing exactly what mouse users do. With the initiation for a single switch set to Switch cycle, Auto select you can use your switch to step through the buttons and pause for your selection to be activated.

Choosing a red background with SwitchCursor's current Button Bar set as red buttons and red wires is not particularly clever, so they will need to be changed.

Use the SwitchCursor icon in the Taskbar information area to open the Configuration Editor: you can either right-click and choose Editor, or simply double-click.

Speed and pauses are set on the General tab. Choose the Wires tab and you can change the visibility, colour, thickness, length and transparency:

If you then choose the Button Bar tab, you'll have a list of Button Bar styles and sizes to choose from – or you could always make your own.

There are other commands and features available: see the manual for full details.