Using a select call is shorter, and should be much more portable

import sys, select

print "You have ten seconds to answer!"

i, o, e = select.select( [sys.stdin], [], [], 10 )

if (i):
  print "You said", sys.stdin.readline().strip()
else:
  print "You said nothing!"

If you're on Unix/Linux then the select module will help you.

import sys
from select import select

print "Press any key to configure or wait 5 seconds..."
timeout = 5
rlist, wlist, xlist = select([sys.stdin], [], [], timeout)

if rlist:
    print "Config selected..."
else:
    print "Timed out..."

If you're on Windows, then look into the msvcrt module. (Note this doesn't work in IDLE, but will in cmd prompt)

import sys, time, msvcrt

timeout = 5
startTime = time.time()
inp = None

print "Press any key to configure or wait 5 seconds... "
while True:
    if msvcrt.kbhit():
        inp = msvcrt.getch()
        break
    elif time.time() - startTime > timeout:
        break

if inp:
    print "Config selected..."
else:
    print "Timed out..."

By default getch will block until you have a character input ready. If nodelay mode is True, then you will either get the character value (0-255) of the character that is ready, or you will get a -1 indicating that no character value is ready.

stdscr.nodelay(True) #Set nodelay to be True, it won't block anymore
k = stdscr.getch() #Either the next character of input, or -1