As the leader of the JP1 group, I can say that I don't mind helping people program their JP1 remotes, even if they are just going to use them to program an MX500, but I do chose to ignore posts from people who make no effort to figure the stuff out themselves and just want us to do all the work for them.

As for why someone would want the MX500 over other remotes, I can understand this completely, and in fact I have often urged the folks at UEI and OFA to consider making their own, JP1 compatible, remote to compete with the MX500.

The MX500 remote has buttons for most of the regular functions, such as numbers, transport, etc (although the navigation thumbpad leaves alot to be desired - and funnily enough, it looks like OFA was inspired by this nasty button for their URC-8910 remote). It then has an LCD screen (which is NOT a touch screen), that is surrounded by ten unlabelled buttons. When you start using the remote, these 10 buttons are your device buttons, which you can re-label yourself with names like "TIVO" and "RPLAY" (only 5 digits I'm afraid). Once you select a device, these 10 buttons then become "extra" buttons for all of those less common functions. There is a PAGE button that let's you scroll to a 2nd page of extra buttons if they are needed, so you can stash those functions that you very rarely need, but want to have around here.

The MX500 does have built in setup codes, but for the most part they suck, so people generally use learning to program the remote, which is a little tedious but it does get the job done. Without the "advanced codes" feature that UEI remotes are famous for, there is no way to generate discrete codes on this remote, which is why many MX500 owners also have a UEI remote around.

As for the MX500 being hooked up to your PC, some people have developed a device that uses the remote's "clone" feature (ie, the feature that lets you clone one MX500 to another) to make PC backups of the data, which you can then edit. I know nothing mroe than that about it, but you can get more info at http://www.irclone.com/

Rob
http://www.hifi-remote.com