Thoughts on Logitech Harmony One universal remote

I recently purchased a universal remote control to replace the three other remotes that littered our living room. Both the remotes for the Comcast cable box and Marantz AV receiver were theoretically universal, but none really functioned as such as they were too hard to set up and too hard to use. So my wife and I did the familiar remote juggle.

Hoping to fix this I selected the Logitech Harmony One for various reasons which I'll go into. (I should also note that Logitech is a client of Frog Design, where I work, but I'm writing this purely as a customer.)

I have long been skeptical of universal remotes as they never really seemed to be, well, universal. I've done a lot of research for projects over the years where I visit people in their homes to look at how they use technology and a typical scenario these days is that each TV set-up has three to five remotes layed out in front of the couch. On top of that, many houses have several TV's, each with their own stack of cable/satellite box, DVD, and perhaps a receiver. So that can add up to a dozen or more remotes per household, all of which work differently. It's a complete mess.