Digital thermostat as an alternative to Hive

[John Rumm]

That does not mean there is a usability problem with all stats, or for all people. Obviously some are better than others.

One size does not fit all.

I would expect if you look at the big picture, they will result in savings overall for the majority who install them. Especially for households with clear patterns of occupation - with people out at work / school at standard parts of the day. The stat can remember to setback the heating during the day without fail, but then have the house warm on their return. With a manual stat someone has got to remember to do it every time.

[tabbypurr]

obviously. And plainly there is a usability problem with some

Occupancy pattern is key I think. If you work varying hours a bimetal works better. If your hours are like clockwork a digital works better.

NT

[Roger Mills]

If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control (Hive, Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head for home.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

[John Rumm]

One might argue that if you work varying hours, then remotely accessible electronic is better still.

[John Rumm]

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

[Max Demian]

Person one is going home early, so switches it on. Person two is going to be late home, so switches it off.

(Surely you can just turn it on when you get home. Technology for the sake of it. Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even to do a bit of word processing.)

[Roger Mills]

Or always hunt in a pack.

[Dave Liquorice]

Only if you remember to turn it down *every* time you go out and are happy to come back to a cool house.

A programable stat can be set to automatically fall back every few hours, then you only have the cool house on return issue.

[John Rumm]

Unless you have a place that takes a few hours to get to a comfortable temperature...

[Dave Liquorice]

Or days... B-)

[tabbypurr]

Quite.

It didn't need any extras for that.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it down because is going to be late.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes. The idea of having to manually control the heating when going out and coming back seems to me a very retrograde step. And I doubt it will save you the 100 quid or so rental cost in lower fuel usage.

One of those 'must have' toys that only a tiny number will actually find useful.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Which is why heating systems have had timers for ages. By taking that away and relying on doing it manually seems to me a retrograde step.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Except a printer, I suppose.

[Max Demian]

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Then you needed the word processor ROM - I think they called it "Word" - and someone to plug it into the motherboard - if you didn't want to do it yourself.

Then you had to get a proper monitor, as the TV picture is too fuzzy for

80 columns.

Then a floppy disk drive to save the documents as cassette recorders are too much of a faff.

But before that you had to get a shop to fit the disk interface - and The World ran short of the controller chips for a time.

(I had a non-standard interface fitted to mine - which wouldn't load many of the games you could buy due to anti-piracy routines.)

Actually never did any word processing on mine - its main use was learning BASIC.

[tabbypurr]

I used to word proces on a BBC long ago. No extras were needed, unless you count the printer & its lead.

Obviously floppies are a big improvement on cassette, but aren't a requirement for WP. I had floppies but never had or used the word rom. No need. These days PC users are often incapable of what was once routine.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Of course - I remember that now. But it might have been possible to load a different wordprocessor programme in the normal way. However, given the time that would take, plugging in a ROM made more sense.

Or a TV which accepted an RGB signal.

I'd thought it was a nice touch that you could expand it to what you needed. Although much of that a cottage industry.

[John Rumm]

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they were relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the RX80 (although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in today's money they would have been well over a grand)