Rarely does a new gadget bring me such happiness as quickly and easily as did Hot Link. Hands down, it is the best US$50 I've spent on tech in the past couple of years. Hot Link isn't going to alter your lifestyle or raise your social status among peers. After all, it is only a remote control range-extender and repeater. But it is one of the few products I've introduced to my home that truly delivered as much as it promised; it even coaxed an appreciative cluck out of my tech-wary girlfriend.

Hot Link is not for everyone. However, there are millions of people out there who, like the pre-Hot Link me, suffer from remote controls that don't quite work with a room's furniture layout. If you're living in your own private couch-potato hell, forced to get up every time you want to use your remote, I feel your pain. Ensconced comfortably on my couch, I had to get up and lean two feet to the left of the armrest to get my remote control to communicate with my stereo and VCR -- all because the components' infra-red eyes are too weak to receive signals from extreme angles. And if my new wood media cabinet doors were closed, I'd have to walk across the room and open them.

Surely, there must be a solution. Enter Hot Link.

The product is a small remote-control eye on a one foot wire leading to a small A/C powered amplifier. On the other side of the amplifier is a seven- foot ribbon wire with small infrared emitters which stick on to the sensors of your stereo components, VCR or similar device.

It is supposed to have a range of sixty-five feet and I found that it worked well as far away as I could get in my house (30'). The eye is so sensitive that it picks up my remote control commands even when they are bounced off a window or wall, making hiding Hot Link from plain view even easier.

Installation was remarkably easy, though I recommend giving some thought to where you hide the eye -- mine is under the shadow of our mantle piece, which adjoins the media cabinet. Hot Link hasn't really changed my life, but it sure has made one small part of it a lot more pleasant.