I was reading through some threads kind of bored and I saw a few references to a "mouse mode" for the Pronto?

I am still fairly new to these remotes but why haven't I heard of this and what can it do?

Would you be able to use this in place of an infra red mouse, Is it similar to a mini touch panel some laptops have?

The only other option I see with it is when people want to clean their Pronto Screen...which on its own would be handy.

SO what is mouse mode?

Cheers to anyone willing to explain it

Philips used to make an IR keyboard. The Pronto could be used as a track pad (like on some laptops) with the IR receiver that came with the keyboard. When you jump to mouse mode, the whole screen becomes the track pad, the two buttons at the bottom are used as mouse buttons and the backlight is used to bring it back to remote mode. If you don't have the IR receiver, then the commands sent by the Pronto are just noise, and cannot control anything. Also since the whole screen is used, you don't have the system buttons (home, macro, device) to worry about.

so now its just a useless function that doesnt work these days?

works as a clean screen. Also if you can get ahold of the IR receiver or the keyboard/receiver, it should still work.