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In Search of the Best Programmable Universal Remote?
option8 asks: "Now that i have more components in my living room than I have room on the coffee table for their remotes, I'm looking into getting a programmable universal remote. I've looked at some of the spiffy touchscreen jobs, like the Philips Pronto and even some of the new color remotes, but it seems to me that spending more for my remote than I did on my DVD player is overdoing it somewhat. Also, all I've found are ones with windows support for building screens. Are there any out there that I can use with Linux?" There was a previous Ask Slashdot on this subject back in '99, anything new to report since then?
Personally I'd stay away from the touch screen remotes. I find that I rely on tactile feedback too much to use them. In other words I like to feel my way to the correct button rather than look down to find where I need to press. If you do go touch screen make sure you get one that's backlit. Without tactile feedback it's hard to find the right button and it's doubly hard when you have the lights out.
I don't have any specific recommendations but if I were going to buy a new universal remote I'd get a good ole push button type with learning capability and plenty of extra buttons. My biggest complaint with the cheaper universal remotes is that they always seem to leave off one or two buttons that I use frequently on the native remote. Get a good learning remote with plenty of programmable buttons and that'd alleviate that problem.