Having been an iPronto user from day one, I find little problems with it, but then again I ask very little of it. All I ask is to send an IR sequence that I associated with a touchscreen button or hard key when I press it and possibly to go to a different iPronto screen. I use no other features.

Having said that I will NEVER buy another Philips product, and I do mean NEVER. I feel that they made implied promises based upon which people spent a lot of money. They (Philips) then hid behind their "Subject to change" disclaimer and the word "future". The only company that has even come close to dealing so poorly with their customers is Sony BMG with their latest copy protection fiasco involving the installation of buggy spying software on PC's that they do not own or have any rights to. All of this whether you say yes or no when they ask, and then not even providing a way to remove it.

If Philips has truly abondoned the product, then the least they could do is release the software and developent environments so others could take an interesting piece of hardware and make it a very powerful tool.

At this time there is a company that has developed an iPronto like product to be available 1Q06. The company is RTI and there web site is www.rticorp.com. The product is the T4. It will be evry interesting what they do with that product in the way of support, and open extensibility.

Another interesting company is Roku Labs who released a media device with an interesting hardware platform mainly for displaying HD images and playing music. What they did that is interesting was to release a full development kit to extend the base software which is just Linux running some apps. Third party developers have made the device very interesting. The company actively supports the third party developers. An interesting take on "TiVo hacking". The hardware as some problems, but they are easily overcome.

In summary, Philips NEVER, Sony-BMG heading for trouble. There are lots of developments coming to the market place.