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The lonely tech post thread.

Got a smart thermostat installed over the weekend. I'm not that into IoT shit tbh, but we had no thermostat at all, so figured I might as well try one and went for a Google Nest.

It's weirdly not as granular as I was hoping for. For example, I can't set it to come on for just half an hour in the mornings, seems to need a full hour block. Claims it learns your patterns, but with the cost of energy, I'm not sure how much I trust it to do that.
 
That's a bit crap. The 13 year old thermostat that came with our boiler and isn't internet connected can have different settings in half hour increments.

Though you can't turn it off on a timer, except for setting a holiday. But you can set it at 12C from midnight to 6 and then 19 from 6 to 0630. Which is more useful anyhow, because modern boilers can modulate and not run 100% if they're close to the target temp, so it would burn less gas if you were already at 18C.
 
That's a bit crap. The 13 year old thermostat that came with our boiler and isn't internet connected can have different settings in half hour increments.

Though you can't turn it off on a timer, except for setting a holiday. But you can set it at 12C from midnight to 6 and then 19 from 6 to 0630. Which is more useful anyhow, because modern boilers can modulate and not run 100% if they're close to the target temp, so it would burn less gas if you were already at 18C.

Yes, this is why I want a thermostat really, we've been running at all or nothing for a few years. I don't think it's the end of the world, just set it to come on earlier, but at a lower temp, it's just a different mindset after not having one at all.

Quite like the eco mode if we do go away in the dead of winter, I'm sure you can do all this stuff with a normal one, but the nest app makes it make easy. It's not been cold enough yet for me to turn it on whilst I'm travelling home, but I like the idea.
 
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Yeah, with roughly annual drive failures :(
I've been looking at alternatives recently, including VMs with various hosting suppliers.
Surprisingly as machine specs get larger, the VM vs dedicated prices seem to converge, At least for some.

That doesn't surprise me that much, but I'm far from an expert. I know at my last place we moved to VMs, but I think that's more because the boss couldn't afford the capital expenditure rather than the total cost of ownership.
 
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