I have even received personal e-mail on this issue... thanks very much... this is one of the reasons I love this forum. My edited reply to the e-mail which I will not post due to serious price issues follows...

"Thanks for the personal reply. I almost went over it as it was sandwiched between 50 ads for Viagra, Penis Enlargement, Lower mortgage rates and virus attachments. We usually sell a TSU7000. Since we don't line list our bids we usually get our price but sometimes have to drop it a little. I've been doing them for years and have a really easy, quick process and a serious library of drop and drag components.

I think it has worked well for us in the past but now that we are more aware of bulletproof control... we must move toward it. I spend too much time on troubleshooting this part of the system. My installers take it to the point where I come in. My other goal is to get them to do the finish programming as well so they can feel the pain they leave me with (that and to lower my week to say... 70 hours).

My bug with Crestron is that there is no way I can become Crestron man... can't find the time and don't want to take it over. That and the $15,000.00 buy in plus steep learning curve. On the other side though... I hate the idea of Windows based systems... who needs the automation system crashing daily or catching a virus when the teenage kid downloads porn clips.

I've thought about farming out but a friend of mine who did that found that the "programmer/wolf in sheeps clothing" was marketing his clients... plus if I don't know the system and that guy gets run over by a truck we're both hosed. For that reason I want to keep it in house.

As you can tell, I'm at a crossroads (actually more like a Paris Roundabout) and want to make the right turn. Thanks again for your input... I imagine I could easily include the price of the basic Crestron system as that is not that far over and as you state... the reliability would be worth its weight in gold."

A Pronto can be a neat tool... My problem with Intellicontrol is the same as Alan mentioned... no nomenclature. With that system you are still the only one who can reliably operate your system. The way we do Prontos the 8 to 80 year old guest can operate them as well... without usually messing things up.

A lot of it is based on product selection. One of our bases for products are those we know work well and are repeatable. Thats why the client who calls us with a bunch of Best Buy/ Circuit City boxes that we've never dealt with gets referred elsewhere.

In the e-mail I received there was also a good comment about access to RS232 codes that are completely unavailable in any form of IR. Some such as screen ratio, startups, etc. I cansee as being very valuable.

I went to CEDIA this year with the goal in mind of finding a Crestron/AMX price beater that was way more reliable than a Pronto...a lot of new ideas but still not settled on anything.