I don't know if this will help, but before I built my core/hybrid, I had LinuxMCE running on VMware server as a virtual appliance. This gave me a chance to work out a few issues and questions that I had about the program. This also gave me full access to my windows drives, where I have all of my audio media stored. I also was able to control both machines with the same wireless keyboard and mouse. This also made it possible for me to connect to my home network the only way I can, by aWIFI card, which ordinarily works in windows, but not linux (vmware just used NAT for this).
This may be the opposite way of what you were asking, by using a windows machine to control your LMCE box, but it worked out very well for me. This also gave me the chance to play around with the bluetooth dongle and a wiimote and to add in custom artwork instead of only downloading pictures from flikr. VMware server is free to download and you can create your own machines with it.