Salling Clicker 3.5 review

Why would you want to do that, you might wonder? Apart from the obvious answer - you want to control your business presentation without having to be stuck face down in your laptop.

Well think about it. PCs are increasingly becoming the hub of multimedia entertainment in the home. And what use is an entertainment device without a remote control?

Salling Clicker lets you control iTunes and Windows Media Player (and a ton of other apps) remotely. While most other remote controls - including Apple's own - stop at a simple play/pause/select/volume, your mobile phone and its screen become a fully functional interactive controller.

So in iTunes, for example, you can browse by Artist, Album, Song and even use the search function to find the track you want. You don't even have to be able to see the computer. And while that track is playing your Nokia N95's screen will show you the track info including duration and even show you a thumbnail image of the cover art. Smart.

This latest version 3.5 of Clicker offers one new feature that is tailor-made for the Nokia N95: Wi-Fi support. So if you have a home Wi-Fi network you can control your PC from anywhere that has network access.

Set-up is a breeze - after you've installed the software on your PC and phone a wizard simply asks you to assign a password for the computer and that's it. You can even use the N95 to control several different computers on the same network.

In practice, it works like a dream. Wi-Fi offers increased range and speed when compared with Bluetooth and we didn't experience any dropped connections - we literally left our N95 for hours at a time hooked up to our computer to control the office's music (as I write this I've just upped the volume on the Kooks' Jackie Big Tits).

At the moment Clicker only offers limited support for Windows Media Center - essentially everything that you can access via Windows Media Player. But the application is highly scriptable and Jonas Salling is working on fuller WMC functionality as I write. Apple Mac users will be glad to know that Front Row is supported in Clicker 3.5 - although you have to be able to see the Mac's screen to use it.

Of course, Clicker is not just a music remote. It comes into its own with presentation software such as PowerPoint and Keynote as not only can you control the slides remotely you can also view slide notes on your N95 and - in the Windows version - see a visual preview of the next slide.

There are scripts for a raft of other applications - everything from photo software to email. The software also supports 'phone events', for instance by fading down the volume of the music when there's an incoming call.

You can even make it automatically lock up your computer when you move away from it and unlock it when you return - a magic feat achieved by monitoring the strength of your Nokia N95's Bluetooth connection.

In short, Salling is a nigh-on essential purchase for anyone who owns a Nokia N95 (or any of the other 300 supported phones). The Wi-Fi support is spectacularly useful and has been implemented seamlessly.

The niggles that remain are so minor - such as the option to change the font size on the display - that you feel slightly guilty even mentioning them. Especially when the asking price for Clicker is a ridiculously affordable $23.95 (about 13 quid in real money).

Salling Clicker and the Nokia N95 go together like Pete Doherty and Crack. Only they're far more useful and entertaining and will probably last a lot longer, too.