As a standalone home automation app, $80, might be reasonable, it is less than homeseer. But from a htpc standpoint I moved away from girder/netremote to housebot due to the fact thet they went comercial. My setup is currently 2 HTPC's (soon to be 3), a server and an ipaq. I pay $80 and put housebot on the server to control x10, and automated tasks on the computer, and the client on my ipaq. Resonable.
Now to do the small tasks that girder once did on my HTPC machines (rs232 control of reciever, usb-uirt control, and control of software..meedio). This would cost $160.
Where a girder/netremote combo would cost about $90, thats a $150 price differance. When I add a third HTPC to the mix, I could pay $320 or $110.
So I ask if there will be some sort of housebot lite. Limited functionality, for strict htpc use. The functions I mentioned above. When installing you get to choose lets say 5 plugins (in my case rs232, usb-uirt, meedio, tcp/ip). This way the housebot server will recieve all the commands and sent them to the housebot lite to be executed. If this were priced at $30~$40 the price differance of a housebot server and 2 housebot lites, is closer to 3 girders and a netremote pro ($140/$90 or $160/$90).
For my example to work you would have to allow only approved plugins to work (internally written ones or such), as someone could always try to write the ultimate plugin to do everything. I also know some of the plugins I mentioned don't exist, meedio, or are part of the core (I think the rs232 is or I could be wrong).
I may be a myHTPC fanboy, but I can not justify spending $320 to control my home and home entertainment equiptment. I will wait and see what comes out of housebot 3.0, but untill then as I am a housebot user with no free copy I will stick with 2.15.