OK, in the futile hope that I won't be misconstrued as shilling for EasyZapper, let me say this: this is a BETA program. Beta, beta, beta. Now,maybe they should have named it a "Development" program, and maybe the word Beta is often used incorrectly, but the word does sort of captures everybody's attention.

The hardware, for the initial release, is rock solid. The design of the Harmony that you see on the website is what the product is going to look like. As a Beta tester, I've asked for other things hardware-wise, but the hardware stands for now.

The software is also rock solid: it's just not finished yet. It is "finished" from the point of view that, even though I've run this sucker through a dry-wringer, I cannot get the firmware to crash on the remote, and any bugs I've encountered (very few) on the client software have been more than corrected.

Waht I'm working with is not the "release", and I'm having a lot of fun, just like I did with Uli and the Ucommand, because these guys at EasyZapper listen to every word. Most of my suggestions and comments have been discussed long before I brought them up, and the ones that catch them by surprise make them very happy. So, every little while, they add some more functionality. No flux here: just a growth pattern for a product under development.

They won't be charging for TV listings; the boss has answered pretty positively that even if things went seriously sour down the road, the users would not be left out in the cold; and they are giving everyone a half-price deal right now to deal with the situation, to me says a poop-load. :-) ... Mike