On Thursday my new Harmony 670 came in. I couldn't wait to install the software and get going.

However, I have a very slow dial up connection at home. Most of the time I connect between 26kbps and 28kbps, which is roughly half the rate of a good dial up connection. I had hoped that online communication with the remote would be limited to passing info back and forth about the particular IR codecs for the equipment that I had selected. This was generally correct, and once things were set up, my dial-up performance wasn't a problem.

What is a problem is that the Harmony software feels that it's necessary to update itself to the most current version before allowing you to proceed. When I first started the software, it stated that it needed to start some updates. It gave me no "do it later" option.

It took almost 4 hours to update the software!!!!!!!!!!!

I love the remote, and once the software was updated everything has been working great and programming it is pretty quick, but a 4 hour software update just isn't acceptable to me. Even with a fast dial up connection I would have had my phones tied up for over 2 hours not including the actual time spent programming the remote. Harmony really needs to provide some stand-alone software for this product, or at least mention somewhere in the literature that if you have a poor connection that they can mail you a cd copy of the most recent software.

Another thought I had was about professional installers who may want to use this product. If Harmony ever expects to be able to gain popularity with installers, they have got to provide stand-alone software that the installer can run from a lap top, free of an internet connection. Make updates available for download that include the latest remote data that he can do at the office.

If you're into remotes like that, I'd also think you would have broadband. I just bought the Harmony one. I can't imagine even an update taking hours but it has been years since I've had dial up. The whole update took a couple mins which usually doesn't translate to hours over dial up. Maybe the setup process is different with your remote versus the Harmony One.

At any rate, it's bad to have to wait that long for an update. Maybe you should speak with your phone company about at least getting your dial up speed up to where it should be so at least things would go a little bit faster for you.

Unfortunately, not every techno-geek lives in an urban or even suburban area. I live in the stix, which is why I've got satellite TV instead of cable, and why I've got crappy dial-up. Calls to the phone company don't do anything either. They promise good phone service. Whether or not you get good data over phone lines is not part of their mission statement. My parents went through this for years (They live one town over), and the phone company comes out, tinkers with the distribution panel in town, and that helps with the connections for a while. Unfortunately, I live quite a distance from their closest distribution panel, and there really isn't much that's going to help my connection.

But my connection aside, even with a good dial-up connection, I would have faced 2+ hours of update time. Somewhere around 1/3 of all internet users in the US are still on dial-up.

I used dial up for a few months with the Harmony 880 and didn't have any issues with it, but then I was using the web interface instead of the desktop application.

http://members.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/New/Main.asp?WebProcessAction=Start&ClassId=HarmonyProcess%2EProcLogin&RelativePath=ProcLogin%2F&ReturnUrl=%2FEasyZapper%2FUserHome%2Easp&AccountType=Normal&Error=&UserName=&Password=&BrowserType=Mozilla%2F4%2E0%20%28compatible%3B%20MSIE%207%2E 0%3B%20Windows%20NT%205%2E1%3B%20%2ENET%20CLR%201%2E0%2E3705 %3B%20%2ENET%20CLR%201%2E1%2E4322%3B%20Media%20Center%20PC%2 04%2E0%3B%20%2ENET%20CLR%202%2E0%2E50727%29

Try using this instead.