Hi Fellows!

I am writing this review on a product called CyberOrg RemoteM@te!!

This review on something that is very unique, something very special, something that changed the way I work with computers.

Do you listen to songs with your PC? or watch movies with your friends and family on your Computer? or often give powerpoint presentations to your business associates? If answer to any of these is yes, then this is for you!

If you listen to songs on your computer, and your phone rings you first have to go to your PC to pause/mute the song. If you are watching a movie and feel like forwarding a song or rewinding an interisting scene, you have to go near to your computer. While giving a lecture using powerpoint slides you have to employ a person who guides the slideshow, any mis-communication between you and him will lead to chaos and the loss of audiance’s interest.

Have you ever felt that there must be something that could make things simple... Wireless mouse? you require a pad for that, and you also have to have a line of sight with the receiver! and its neither cheap.

If you ever felt a need of a Remote control for your computer, then this is for you.

It is called RemoteM@te, I bought it from BITA (Baroda Information Technology Association Exhibition). The package contained one Software CD, one InfraRed Receiver and one handhelo infrared Remote Control with 52 buttons (which looks very similar to an MP3 player’s Remote).

The installation was foolproof, extremely simple to setup the device, I just plugged it in the serial port (didn’t even need to turn off my PC for that). Then I inserted the CD in the CD-Rom drive, and installed the software. No issues at all, no device driver required at all.

You might be wondering that what do I do with this remote control? I asked the same question myself when the person was trying to display the device to me. He replied, ’’you can control the whole computer with this remote’’, I thought that he is kidding, but no he was serious. He went on to explain me what all the remote can do.

First of all he said that the remote has 10 buttons with which I can launch any application of my choice. Then he said that the remote control has the whole mouse including, the scrolls integrated, within your thumb’s distance. Yes it was, it has buttons like we have in our MP3 player, the up, down, left, right, the zoom button in the middle is the left click.

I said its fine I can control the computer with a wireless mouse too! He said have patience, I will show you the magic in some time...

He pointed at the eight buttons at the bottom of the remote which he called ’’smart buttons’’. I asked whats smart about them? He replied Those eight buttons first identify what application is running in the foreground and then works accordingly. e.g if Windows Media Player is running and you press the next button, the button identifies that it is supposed to take you to the next song, similarly if Powerpoint is running then the same button takes the user to the next slide!!! cool. Those Eight buttons are : Back, Next, Fwd, Rew, Play, Pause, Record, Stop.

So far he had shown how to start applications, use mouse and the 8 special purpose buttons, he went on to show me that the remote can do host of other things like Task Switcher (alt+tab), shutdown/logoff/reboot the system, ejecting the CD-ROM drive, cut, copy, paste, TAB, Enter key, delete key, Cntr+O, etc...

Now here is what surprised me, you can turn off your monitor using this remote! ie you can actually save on your electricity bills while listening to music, as you have all the controls of your fav media player in your remote you dont require to the monitor switched on.

I said pretty neat, but then he gave me another surprise, on a press of a button the whole remote turned into a Keyboard! he said that it is multilayered so that one can have unlimited number of functions with just 52 buttons...just like pressing S is different than pressing CTRL+S. The third layout (first being normal, second the keyboard) is kept empty for the user to configure.

I thought here comes the catch, it must be extremely difficult to programme those buttons, but no, the software package had a GUI utility to change the functionality of any button you wish, so that means that it is completely customizable!

The gUI is extremely easy to use, a model of the remote is shown on the left of the window, if you want to customize a button you just click on it and the right hand side of the window will show you the options of what you wish to do with the button, like fire a keyboard event, or a mouse event, or system event, or launch an application. Interestingly the keyboard event can be used to fire shortcuts as well like ctrl+alt+shift+f8, and it can be configured with just 3 checkboxes.

There is one more thing that needs special mention, the master volume control and the mute buttons. You can control the system’s master volume using the remote and also mute the system volume.

Just when I was thinking that this thing would be extremely costly, somewhere around 2-3 thousand... the fellow sait that its mine all for just Rs. 699.

I thought that for 700 bucks its a steal, he even gave back my 1 Re. :), nice guy. Whats more he ships it throughout India for a nominal extra charge. I suggest go and get it now. I promise you wont regret buying such a great thing.

The only thing I didnt’ like about RemoteM@te is that it works only with serial port, USB version is under development (as per him). The built quality is exceptionally good, the packaging is perfect, also the remote is not just another remote off the street its quite sturdy. as far as the receiver goes, it could use some rethinking but still looks great on the top of my monitor.

If you want more information you can visit www.cyberorg.info, or e-mail him at virat.gohil@cyberorg.info.

Thats all for now, enjoy reading and writing on MouthShut.com

[Note: Sorry to put my review under this category, cause I couldn’t find a suitable category.]

Purchase Price (INR):	700
Operating System:	Windows
CPU type:	No Comment
CPU Speed (MHz):	No Comment
RAM:	No Comment