You don't have to have the skills to write the drivers and the code, any more than you need to know how to build IR emitters to use a Crestron system. I've already done that for you, or will do for you in the case of drivers that you might need. All you need is the skill to configure drivers, set up the actions you want to be able to invoke, and draw the interfaces using the interface designer (and of course install the hardware, which is a requirement either way.)

I think you guys must feel really threatened by PC based systems, or you wouldn't go so out of your way to run down something that you claim has no chance to succeed anyway. But, as I said above, there were people in all those other industries who were saying that PCs would never replace their dedicated hardware tools until it happened.

So it's kind of hard to believe that people would still believe that of the control and automation world, when it might be even more functionally amenable to general purpose computers than some of the ones already replaced. As media management becomes more important, the general purpose PC's ability to offer rich user interfaces and to do heavy multi-tasking and it's natively IP based networking, will just make it even easier for them to replace traditional automation systems based on proprietary hardware.

Obviously, the entrenched companies will try to spread out. But they will be caught between a rock and a hard place. They can't sell you a proprietary system that you are going to live with for the next 10 years, at the same time that they are telling other people that PCs are the future and that they are moving in that direction soon. And those companies that now survive on high margin, proprietary hardware are going to find it hard to compete in a world where the software is really what matters and hardware is a commodity.

You can dismiss it if you want, but before too much longer, you'll either be installing general purpose PC-based systems (whether openly so or effectively so just behind a pretty enclosure), or you'll be getting left behind.