I have been looking for a suitable remote control for my media centre for a while now, and decided to take a chance on a £25 2.4GHz remote control with built in optical track ball from eBay:
I was worried that it might be a bit cheap and perform poorly, but was pleasantly surprised by how well made it is. It fits nicely in my hand and the trackball is accurate. The mouse button placement could be a little better. Many of the media keys just work in Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and I set up mapping for a few others like skip forwards/backwards.
One slight disappointment is that the remote does not seem to be able to power my PC on. It may be due to the PC itself – the BIOS only supports power on by keyboard. Some systems support power on by USB device or mouse, which might do the trick.
On the subject of the desktop, I increased the font size setting in Vista to 120dpi and them manually increased a few here and there. I also selected the largest possible mouse cursor. On a 106cm screen I can read everything from two or three meters away.
Overall I’m very happy with this remote. It seems to be reliable, robust and very usable.