Testing:
Once the software was installed and I started playing around, one thing was very clear - I had a lot to learn. As simple as it looks, the MFP51 with the included iMon and iMedian software is one very powerful device. Along with the nearly never-ending media control abilities, there are so many other features which give you more control over the computer itself. If I were to talk about every single feature possible, I could probably end up writing a book instead of a review, so instead I'll talk about some of the ones that stood out to me.

(I had the EQ set to stereo and split in the middle, you can also have one Graphic EQ on either the top or bottom, all depends on how you like the visuals to look ;) )

First is iMedian, this is the media center hub essentially. When started up using either the icon or iMedian button on the remote, it will launch and run full screen, covering any of your other applications. This will give you access to everything imaginable for media. You can watch movies, play music, listen to web-radio, play and record TV (if you have a tuner card), watch DVD's, and much more. The ability to chose custom background's for the window also lets you customize iMedian to feel very at-home to you when your use it. The entire program is designed to be operated by the included remote and I found that extremely easy to do.

Next is the iMon program, this is what gives you total control over the LCD display, remote abilities and system control itself. The features and menus in this program are nearly endless so you should very easily be able to customize everything to your liking.

The display has eight different display modes you can chose between:
Auto: This will cycle through any selected modes in the options
Graphic EQ: Will display a graphic EQ on the screen that will go along with your media player or any system sounds. This has several different, and cool looking display modes to chose between.
System Information: This will display the system information from whatever categories you select
Media Information: Display's the media information such as artist and title of current song
Email Check: Will check and display the in box status for however many accounts you setup
Daily News: Will display the news from whatever new feed(s) you select
City Information: displays stuff such as weather from your city (if your city isn't in the list, then you'll have to chose one near you)
Plug-in: Will display information from any third-party plugins

In addition to that, iMon also has such features as an application launcher, task switcher, resolution changer, virtual keyboard and timer.

I will briefly touch on the timer because this was a feature I saw a huge potential with. This allows you to set dates and times for your computer to sleep, trigger an alarm, turn off or turn on at. Yep, you can set a time to turn your computer ON, something that isn't possible without a device like this! Remember how I mentioned the MFP51 goes across your ATX power supply line so it gets a constant supply of power? This way, even when your computer is off the device can still run a clock and since it's wired across your motherboard's power switch connections, when that clock reaches a certain time it can physically turn your computer on. Here's where I started to see more non-media uses for this device.
Say you do a lot of work at home, or even have a home business run from your computer. In the past you may have just left this computer always running so you could hop on it and work at any time. But of course leaving a computer running 24/7 will only wear out certain devices faster (like hard drive life spans or critical cooling fans). Picture this, at the end of every day, we'll say midnight, your computer automatically powers itself off. Remaining off for however many hours you sleep. When you wake up and go into the office, your computer is already powered up and ready for the work day ahead. Now multiply the amount of time it's off each night by how many days there are in a year, that's a lot of hours being saved, you may notice things like hard drive life and fan life being greatly increased by doing something like this and you won't need to worry about the possibility of something failing while you sleep. How practical is the display still you ask? While you sit at your desk working you can have all your email accounts automatically checked at whatever time interval you set with their statistics up on the LCD. Now you don't need to keep your email software open non-stop and can free up some memory. See what I mean? You don't have to be a media junky for a unit like this to have tons of uses. I can think of almost every field being able to use the MFP51 and since you don't need to install the iMedian media software, you can even save some hard drive space and just use the iMon display and remote software.

iMon also has two different iTOOLs you can use on your desktop. These are essentially widgets, a lot like what the Mac OS and Windows Vista now have. The news iTOOL displays news feeds that you select on your desktop in a bar. The city iTOOL will show you a fancy clock with the time in your city, but you can expand it to show a weather forecast too.

Like I said, the other options in the iMon software are practically endless and I didn't even touch on the ability to save custom key functions for different programs or the ability to program macro keys. A lot of that stuff is simpler though, so hopefully by giving you an insight into the larger functions of this software I have opened you up to being able to see just a fraction of the power behind the MFP51.