Date: October 25th, 2003
Article by: Roger (Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Tekgems
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PRODUCT FEATURES & WALKTHROUGH

I tested the unit in my LAN room at the office, and so hooked up the receiver to an IBM NetVista running Windows 2000 Pro with SP1.

Your first step is detecting the serial receiver. By now, you should have connected the DB9 serial connector to an available port. You've got 80 inches of cable to play with, so you should have plenty of room to find a spot on your desk for the receiver. They suggest you use the sticky pad and slap it onto your monitor, although I was a little hesitant to do that.

Next, install Winamp 3.0 and the WinAmp 2.x Plugin Manager.

The instructions from Tek Gems were extremely thorough. Installing the Plugin Manager is a breeze. Once you are done, you can check the default actions that are stored in Winamp.

As you can see, there are very few options initially. Remember that you have 34 buttons on that remote and many are programmable. Go through the manual to review the names and actions and using some of the other software packages available, set the unit up to control your DVD player, TV tuner, etc. Hell, you can even set it up to start up a speakerphone on your PC.

I tested the strength of the signal, and was able to skip songs from across the LAN room. I was also able to bounce the signal off of the filing cabinets. The remote was quick to respond to the push of its buttons.