I recently purchased an XBOX 360 Microsoft Wireless Gaming Receiver, it allows a person to use an XBOX 360 controller, Wireless headset, or a Remote control with a PC. Read on for a small review of my experience with it.
The receiver is very small, about the size of a USB thumb drive, you can see it compared to what I have on hand, a Hot Wheels car.
The install of the receiver was quite painless, I installed the included software, plugged in the device... and nothing happened. I had to restart my computer, plug in the receiver, then windows found the device and installed the drivers. I then paired it with a wireless 360 controller that a purchased at the same time, this is done by simply pressing the one button on the receiver, then the sync button on the back of the controller, it took about 2 seconds for the controller to become synced.
There is no real configuration or programing available to you with the windows drivers, you get a small utility that shows you how many devices are connected, and will give you a warning if a device goes out of range. The receiver gives you the ability to have up to 4 devices at a time, I assume that could be a mixture of controllers, headsets and remotes.
The first game I tried the controller with is the racing game Evolution GT. I went into the controller options, and went through each function and assigned a button to them. The only downfall is that the controller will not work in menus, this seems to be a limitation of the game, not the controller, as I got it working in Test Drive Nnlimited. The controller works flawlessly with the game, no hiccups, no loss of signal, I was even able to play about 10 feet away from my monitor, which is as far as I can get and still see the screen.
Over all I would have to say that this works as advertised, no muss, no fuss. It's great to use a console controller for games, there is nothing really like it, it seems that most of the controllers designed just for PCs are cheap feeling and generally crappy. If you are looking for a good wireless game controller for PC games, or a remote for your HTPC, this is a simple way to achieve it.