My story: Spent weeks / months setting up a fairly sophisticated home automation set up running on a Mac Mini. Worked great for 3-4 years, occasionally I would have to re-pair all of the Z-Wave devices after a power outage, but nothing too serious. Then one day the Mac Mini died and I thought about the days/weeks of work to replace it and just decided not too. In the end, it didn't provide a ton of value beyond the shiny UI and charting abilities. It was fun but I don't think I would do it again, unless I was retired or something.