Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have put in no less than 3 (pairs) of these things. Rather than go through the blow-by-blows of the problems I ran into, I will summarize. But first, I will say that I am both a practicing electrician and an electrical engineer, with quite a bit of experience in spec'ing, designing, manufacturing, and installing comparable microcomputer-based gizmos. I am a very qualified reviewer. Okay, here's a list, most egregious problems first: 1. It's unreliable - AT BEST it works a little over half of the time. That is positively weird and definitely unacceptable. I can't figure out why so many people put up with that, except maybe they are so grateful not to run wires to the remote that they put up with anything. It's certainly not a range thing, the radio bits work fine, and putting the transmitter near the receiver changes absolutely nothing. 2. It is susceptible to mystery changes - degradations - in performance. ESD? (That is, static discharge.) Firmware? Probably both. My last set stopped working completely after a month or so. 3. Reprogramming, or more importantly resetting back to what should be default behavior, is bewildering, and I would venture nearly impossible for the average installer or user. My guess is that the firmware is so faulty that the instructions are conveniently vague (awful) so you blame yourself instead of them for not making it work. 4. Reprogramming can be necessary if (God forbid) you press the little red button on the switch/transmitter even once by accident. The button should be recessed (so you can only press it with a ball point pen, for example), but go figure. Also, the little protruding button makes it problematic to use any ordinary switch plate, as it can be depressed - with disastrous results - by ordinary mounting. 5. The physical switch design is full of unnecessarily stupid features. In addition to the little red button, it has: a. Too wide a footprint, so you can't mount it next to other switches using standard multi-gang wall plates. (Even if you wanted to use two SK8's!) b. Blinking red LEDs that mean... well something, maybe. Certainly not "working" or "fault" or anything else logical. Junk ergonomics. c. A momentary switch in the ON position of the Decora-style rocker that toggles off if it gets pressed again. Or ON, sometimes. The switch under the OFF position has less impact on anything. d. A crummy little white mylar film under the Decora rocker substituting for the whole thing being molded white (or Almond, brown, etc.) Why go on? I have recently had very good luck replacing these things with something from Leviton, a "Basic Wireless Light Switch", p/n E3K-A11WH. More expensive - almost $100, but if you value your time and sanity, go with that. There might be other worthwhile alternatives, but my Amazon browsing didn't find anything less expensive. Very frustrating, this SkyLink product could be much improved. WLS