Rather than the sleep, you could use the asynchronous method :
alarm and a signal handler
(can be combined with fork)

$SIG{ALRM} = sub { #Your code here };

eval {
    alarm(60);    # Your code will be executed in 60 seconds
    # do something here
    # anytime during this 60 sec you can cancel the alarm with alarm(0
+)
};
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Example of use:
You can manage timeout by limiting the time allowed to answer
(and/or even pop up a message to say "$x sec remaining...")

UPDATE :
As my previous example seems to be unclear, here is a complete example from a previous post to manage the timeout :

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use IO::Socket;

{
  my $timeout = 0;
  my $sock = undef;

  $SIG{ALRM} = sub {$timeout = 1; die};

  eval {
      alarm (2);
       $sock = new IO::Socket::INET(PeerAddr=> '10.1.1.18',PeerPort =>
+ 29,);
      alarm (0);
  }

 die "Can't open socket: timeout=$timeout\n" if ($timeout or !$sock);
 print "I would print to the socket now, if I knew what I was connecte
+d to\n";

 close ($sock);
}
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"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)