Of course, I'm not discounting these things, nor am I suggesting it can't be done other ways. I'm just saying that this is what you get with a smart thermostat

Of course, I'm not discounting these things, nor am I suggesting it can't be done other ways. I'm just saying that this is what you get with a smart thermostat that you don't get with most non-smart thermostats. The thing I really liked about the Nest is that I just turned the dial to where I felt comfortable and it just took care of everything else for me without me needing to do anything. As long as you're brave enough to put screws in a wall and hook up a handful of wires to connectors, it took about 15 minutes of me getting it out of the box to it being installed and configured. I can't say the same about any other programmable thermostat I ever had. Seriously it wasn't an awful lot more complicated than the mercury switch thermostats I've installed. The handful of Honeywell programmable thermostats I've installed had a disastrously bad user experience. In fact, I installed the Ecobee in my current house because I got so pissed off going through the programming cycle of the Honeywell I gave up before I got to Wednesday :'D