I am very new to these types of things. For the most part i have been using Vista Media center, but i wanted to add touchscreen (mimo um-740) or laptop control to my modest "home theater" I have all devices controlled via IR and a usb-uirt on the way. I have been really looking into mainlobby but stumbled across girder. After downloading the trial, it looks MUCH simpler. Any opinions? I really just want some simple control of my equiptment from more than a harmony pointing at a singular spot in a room. Any thoughts would be great

If you don't get any responses here, check out cocoontech; there's at least 1 very savvy girder/NR guy who's done some amazing stuff.

I used to use Girder a few years ago, it was awesome & damn easy. I only stopped because I outgrew it, and decided to switch to something mega-powerful that I couldn't possibly outgrow. I won't go into that here as it's far overkill for you situation, but I agree that Girder could do the trick quite nicely.

Any idea of who that might be? i searched and was unable to find any experts there

JWilson56. This is his overview thread. (http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=2444&hl=)

Girder is pretty much just the guts that does the work. Mainlobby is the GUI that lets you create fancy screens to control your devices. Mainlobby has limited hardware support for devices and relies more on interfaces to other software such as Girder or Homeseer. Girder is fairly easy for setup but you don't get the fancy screens. I personally use Mainlobby with a GC100 network IR controller which is supported with a plugin and Mainlobby with a Homeseer interface for X10 control.

In the girder world, you use Netremote as the GUI. I wouldn't see the point of using Girder for the back-end with anything but NetRemote for the front-end. Those have been designed to work together.

Plus the cost is a helluva lot cheaper.

IVB do you create your own front-ends for Charmed Quark or how/where do they come from?

Edit: I'm not a stalker but I know you use CQC because of other posts/webinars of yours.

I made some of them, the others I ripped off, eh, borrowed, from some other folks. It's a combo of templates from:
- ripper (awesome artist)
- ellisr63
- wuench
- jkmonroe
- jonathan
a few others that i can't recall off the top of my head. But, they're all freely available, and I have all of mine available for download by others.