Changing My Mind On Harmony Remotes
I stopped at Best Buy last week, where I found their Harmony Remote display endcap. I got to look and touch both the 550 and the 880. Just my luck - I like the more expensive 880 much better than the 500. For starters, it doesn’t use the rubbery chiclet buttons that the 550 includes in its center section. It also has a full color screen with more options on it. And, also handy, it has a recharging base station. While that does mean Yet Another Thing to plug in, it saves on battery recharges and we have a place hidden neatly away to plug that in to handle the problem.
So it looks like I need even more Amazon Associates points! Seriously, I’m humbled by just how much you’ve all ordered in the last couple of weeks since I asked you to consider clicking through VandS before purchasing. Whether your purchases were large — go, Play Station 3s! — or small, they all added up very quickly. Please continue to do so, especially if you want the goodness of a Blu Ray player combined with a gaming console. I highly recommend the PS3, if only out of enlightened self interestr. Heh heh. I’m almost all the way there to the points I need for the remote.
The only problem is that I’ve just read the small print and realized there’s one major gotcha. Amazon only calculates the points at the end of the month, from which they send you the gift certificate. And then they don’t send the money out until 60 days after the end of the month. In other words, I won’t have the points on hand to buy the remote until, quite possibly, October 1st.
That sucks.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Augie, can you add more stuff to your store?
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Yup, you get a pretty blank check with the store to add as much stuff as you’d like. Any requests?
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Well, I know that you said that you hate the chiclet-like butons but Amazon has the Harmony 676 on sale for $49.99 (75% off, orig. $199.99):
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Universal-Remote-Control/dp/B0003QER7S/ref=xs_gb_1_center-2_rw_uk_15575/102-3219185-8593702?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=09PYM857TP285W8R4RV0&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_p=251571601&pf_rd_i=1
July 24th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Things on my radar screen for purchase over the course of the next couple of months:
Extras The Complete Season 2 DVD
New Pornographers - Challengers
Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
The Office Season 3 DVD
Patriot Acts by Greg Rucka
July 24th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Ooops, I see that you already have a Greg Rucka department. Guess I should check the store before typing out my wish list?
July 24th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Any requests, eh? I think you just opened up the flood gates.
July 24th, 2007 at 8:04 am
I would highly recommend the 880. I just upgraded from the 676 to the 880 and am very impressed at the build of the remote. The buttons have a nice, satisfying click to them, the construction of the unit itself is nice and the layout works well. The color LCD is also a nice touch.
While the price listed above for the Harmony 676 is nice, I did have one complaint about the remote which was the main reason I upgraded. After owning the 676 remote for a few years, some of the more frequently used buttons (30 second skip for TiVo, volume, channel up and down) became very hard to use. You had to basically push them down with all your might in order for them to work.
After doing some research, I found that this was a common problem with the 676 models after a few years use. What happens is that oil from your fingers seeps into the rubber used for the buttons and interferes with the contacts. After cracking open the remote (very easy to do) and cleaning it out, the remote works fine again…for a while. It was actually amazing to see how much oil there was on the contacts. After each cleaning, the amount of time I was able to use the remote before needing to clean again became less and less.
I eventually got to the point where a couple of buttons wouldn’t work anymore, no matter how much cleaning I gave them. So, after much frustration and my wife telling me that we needed to buy the new Harmony, I bought my 880. When the wife tells you to buy something new, you know there is a problem! The advantage to the 880 is that is has hard buttons and contacts are designed differently, so there is less worry about non-responsive buttons. And the remote itself has been highly rated with very few problems. The layout took some time to get used to, as it was different from the 676, but overall I really like it.
July 25th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Ezekiel - It doesn’t really matter. Once you click on an item from the VandS Store, or in any Amazon ad on the site, there’s a little chunk added to the URL during your visit to Amazon.com that lets them know you came from my site. Anything you buy during that time will get credited back to me, whether I directly linked to it or not.
That said, I get an extra percent, I think, for direct recommendations, so request away! =)
Josh - Wow, that is a bad design flaw. The 880, it is!