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Don't forget Nest.

I think Nest was a fine buy. They got a hardware company shaking up what was sort of a dead industry (name me one other brand of smoke detector), but also gets them the ability to spread Google in to the home (you're going to see full home automation from Google soon) and they got the designer of the iPod. Decent buy.

Honeywell: I remember it because I bought the 'programmable' one for 199. It was a pain to program, separate programs for cooling and heating, a pain to set right and it looked, well like a beige box on my wall.

When I moved and they had an ancient thermostat it was easy to pay $50 more than the above just so I could control it with a phone. Setting the program is much, much easier than the Honeywell.

I think they bought best for the team as much as the product and I hope nest does sprinkler systems next in their pursuit of solving first world problems.

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