Harmony 600 Remote

"Why didn't we get one of these before" was the shout from my wife when I handed the Harmony 600 to her for the first time. Such praise for a piece of technology in our household is glowing indeed. Indeed I myself regret not having taken the plunge earlier. In a bid to save money I had put up with a multitude of remotes.


My system is heavily centred around a Mac Mini with windows media centre installed on it. Once everything is turned on, all control used to be via a MCE Remote. Of the remotes I have used I believe this is one of the best ever designed. All functions rest within easy reach of the thumb and it is very comfortable to use. It amazes me what a good job the Microsoft engineers have done with windows media center and yet that doesn't propogate to the rest of the organisation. Like wise, why can't I get a livetv media center setup on a mac?? Unfortunately, the remote finally ceased to work and so the search for a replacement started.

I could have got another MCE remote from ebay for £20 but I decided to eliminate the need for all the remotes in the living room.  After much googling I decided on the Harmony 600 as it is reasonably priced and has enough devices for my needs.  Remember to check if your kit is covered by the remote.  I briefly considered the Harmony 650 colour version but it costs £58 vs £42 for the effectively the same piece of hardware.

The setup 
From the box, the remote needs to be plugged into your computer and registered on the logitech site.  Silverlight will probably need to be downloaded for your browser, but this will be under direction from the logitech site.
From there, you will be able to add your devices and activities.  I found it fairly self explanatory and was pleasantly surprised when my default watch tv option powered up the amp,tv,media centre and also setup the correct AV channel.  I had to alter one button from the default setup to make it do what I wanted.

Use
First reactions where positive.  It feels nicely weighted in the hand and is solid. As with any remote it took a short while to get used to the button layout.  My wife loves the ability to point it at my mountain of tech and watch it all leap into life complete with the AV channel on the TV.  The main buttons provide access to most of the functions I require and the screen mops up the more obscure functions that I need to access.

Verdict
I am very pleased with my purchase.  It has proved easy to setup and use and is reasonably priced.