Great input, folks. I started off thinking that a tablet or iphone based solution would be best due to the customiserbility, but I realized that having a sensory touch feel of physical buttons makes operating without looking the winner.
URC are coming to Oz, look like complex beasts! I read about the MX 5000 and drooled! They need to come up with a wizard approach to function building, so Harmony feels like a bridging device ... until a wifi/IP command unit comes out of course.
The iMon PAD, aside fom it's flakey performance, and that its not universal is a good remote for bringing in useful button functions such as mouse clicks, Escape, backspace etc - does the MS standard have these kind of functions? Right mouse click is very important so my wife can use the shuffle option in Theatre View, and I can't see how else to access shuffle without a right mouse click as it does not appear as a play option in the header scroll bar. Is there another way?