[Otto]

Hi there Randy,

Most of the stuff on my preamps setup menus are usually based on the left-right-up-down and enter buttons. The Harmony will easily do that. Of course, the harmony will be able to do all existing buttons on the remote, and perhaps some that aren't on the remote. When you go to the Harmony site and tell it what device you are using, it will automatically "know" all the codes for all buttons (and then some, perhaps). You don't have to point the original remote at the Harmony in order for it to learn the existing buttons. However, in the rare event that the site does not know the device, you certainly can point the remotes together to learn the codes.

It's rather easy to change the layout. It's all done through a web-based GUI that's somewhat intuitive. I used to think it was very goofy, but they've fixed it based on user feedback. I find their willingness to change things and fix things to be very good. Anyway, for each "device" and for each "activity" you have set up, all your entries are there in the GUI. You can change them however you wish. I do wish it was a little more "drag and drop" but it's not. I give the site a good "B" grade.

As to it being macro-oriented -- it can be if you wish it, but it doesn't have to be. Each "activity" (e.g., "watch Dish" or "listen to CDs") will execute whatever commands you need in order to setup the proper inputs, select the device, start the CD or whatever. When you select an activity, it will also populate the screen with the controls you need for that activity. For example, when I select "watch Dish," the forward and backward buttons control the Dish box, and the volume controls my preamp; the screen buttons are also programmed with more Dish stuff, as well as controls for my sub (among other things). When I choose "PC," all the Dish stuff is forgotten, and it's set up to do PC-based stuff. Very slick.

You can assign multiple pages per device or per activity. I would imagine that there's some limit, but I haven't hit it. I think the greatest number of pages I have one one device is six (but I don't think that's the limit). You can put whatever you want there. However, I don't think you can label each page individually when it's inside of a single "device" or "activity." Inside each of those, the pages will just be labeled as "1 of 4," "2 of 4" and so on. You can scroll through the pages with two dedicated buttons.

I, too, had tried several different universal remotes (not to be confused with the "Universal" remote company; just various different remotes). They all sucked for some reason or another. The "best" one I had was probably the Marantz MC2000 Mk II (something like that). It was the most flexible, but had to be programmed by pointing the original at it. It ate batteries and it weighed a ton. The Harmony is rechargable, easy to program and super flexible. I'm using the 890, which is an RF-based version of the 880. I don't have any experience with other models, but I would wholeheartedly recomment the 880 or the 890 to anyone wanting a universal remote. My wife loves it. I'll never go back to using the original remotes on a day to day basis.

Good luck!