You have to pay to have 'standard software' installed, I guess because this imposes a cost on all aspects of the system.

Why not simply make Time::HiRes part of your application. If @INC does not include the current directory, begin your program with use lib '.';.

Update: If you can't compile it for the platform, that's a complication. But if you have the technology, pre-compile what you have to, and just make it all local.