0Motorola NYXBoard

Well, a big con­grat­u­la­tions to pulse-eight and roy­al mail — I ordered a motorola NYX­Board QWERTY Remote con­trol on Monday, and 21 hours later it arrived at my door — and all that for free postage!

The NYX­Board does all that it prom­ises.  It was installed without fuss on my Win­dows 7 x64 HTPC and func­tioned imme­di­ately.  The sig­nal is impress­ive — the r.f. works really well.  I was also impressed that the device worked pre-boot up, unlike oth­er remotes I’ve used.  I have also pro­grammed the remote to con­trol my Yamaha DSP-E800 sur­round sound amp­li­fi­er, and Sam­sung Slim­Fit 32″ HD CRT.  This took a couple of attempts, but has also worked well.  There are only 2 real weak­nesses — the mouse con­trol is slow, and the remote is quite chunky — nowhere as slick as the boxee remote.  Cor­rect­ing these, and adding a super­i­or mouse con­trol meth­od — a small touch­pad, a “nipple” like that sound on some laptops, or an optic­al track­pad (like that found on the HTC Desire) would make for a per­fect device.

Regard­less of these minor imper­fec­tions, all my oth­er remotes have been instantly retired!