I use IRMan with a Home Theater Master universal remote and Girder. I did experiment with the the Girder plugin, but found it too restrictive. Now MJ's keyboard support is a lot better, I just map remote buttons to keys. That has the advantage that most of them work in other apps too.
You'll need a remote with loads of buttons that don't do anything. i.e. send signals that none of your equipment recognises. If you have a universal remote, set it to a piece of equipment you don't have.
My setup procedure:
Install IRMan - no drivers needed
Install MJ
Install Girder
Set Girder to start automatically minimised with Windows
Add Girder IRMan plugin and set it to autoload.
Create a Girder group.
Now's the labourious bit:
1: Add Girder command
2: Set it to send a keypress to the foreground app.
3: Click Learn and press the button on the remote you want to perform that task.
4: Goto 1
There are those who have got Girder to send commands to MJ whether it is the foreground app or not, but I've always had trouble targetting, and prefer to be able to control whatever is running anyway.
The most useful general buttons are Left, Right, Up, Down, Return, Tab, Space, Esc, Alt, context menu, Windows key, Alt-Left, task-switch
Some useful MJ specific ones are Ctrl-P, Ctrl-S, Ctrl-L, Ctrl-N, Ctrl-Left, Ctrl-Right, Ctrl-W, Ctrl-2
Welcome to a world of fun and laziness