Hi Danny, Here's a list of the things we found to be of poor or unusable design. These are just off the top of my head:
1) Buttons are far too small, non-distinguished, and poorly located to use based on touch alone. Any raised dots etc. are so small and indistinguishable that Helen Keller would cry. Me... I want reasonably sized rubber buttons with peaks and valleys - so that my big thumb easily finds it way around without looking at the thing. The 880 makes operation require looking at the damned thing. The pretty screen should be an aid, not a requirement. 2) One handed operation is not possible unless you have 9 inch long thumbs. The numeric pad is not reachable from the mid-section typical grip. The smooth rounded curvature of the units causes the unit to twist and rotate out of hand - there's not much to hold onto while you're trying to use your thumb to hit buttons. The left-right-up-down shuttle-like arrow keys are more appropriate for a dashboard of a car where mostly style is important - but for a remote, the buttons are way too small, and unconvential given all the other remotes that have similar features. These are the buttons used 90% of the time, yet they are so small! 3) The website programming has numerous problems where you get a non-specific error message during programming. It actually gives no details whatsoever other than to contact customer support. And contacting customer support yields a response that says be sure to use the correct browswer and "Please tell us exactly what you did to cause the problem". The freaking site can know exactly what you did, where you were, and what button you pressed, but they didn't bother to program in such logic, leaving it up to the customer. 4) The website is PAINFULLY slow. Press button... wait... wait.... wait... next screen. 5) Transferring programming information is even more PAINFULLY slow. Each time you customize a button or menu item and want to test, there's a 2 to 5 minute download wait! What the hell's up with that! 6) The Harmony website for programming the remote is just miserable. Its layout, and utility stinks. Logitech needs to do some heavy investing there, but given the state and duration of their other sites, that won't happen - ever. 7) My amp had 11 screens worth of menus on the remote. There's no way that clicking through 11 screens trying to find that one function is in anyway useful. Such functions are in plain site on the original remote that came with the amp. It is faster to get up, pick up the old remote, click the button, put it away, and sit back down than it is to scroll and search 11 screens! 8) Customization of Button and menus using the predefined functions is a game in frustration at best. My amp has several hundred unique codes and functions - trying to identify the difference between Mode - Surround 1, Mode - Surroud 2, etc. x200 using the very short, simplistic names presented in the scroll list on the website is just terrible. There is no explanation as to what each function is supposed to map to on your device, the names do not match the names i know from the device and manual, and at 2-5 minutes per download to test each, I'd get old and gray before I'd get the right setup. Least I sound all curmudgeony, there are some nice things too, but those are covered on plenty of other review sites. -- MrC _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
