1) It still sounds like girder is best for you, until you get your mind around this enough to think you want something else. I'd hate for you to have buyer's remorse for a package that's so much more expensive than you were contemplating spending, and have you be irritated as a result.
2) You don't necessarily need a 30d test drive - If you can handle listening to the melodious sound of my voice for 90-120 minutes, you should attend one of the "Intro to HA" webinars. The agenda is listed below, but by the end, you'll have seen me tell CQC I have a piece of hardware, create a screen for manual control, and create automated rules to do something in response to a field change. (ie, someone flips a light switch or does something else - go do this in response). That will give you the overall flavor of how you would use CQC to create your setup, and will answer whether it makes sense to you or not. You can read up on JohnW's and other folks' approach & success with Girder/NR, and decide what you think there.
I still think it's a little wacky to even contemplate spending $700 for CQC without doing the trial, but I'm no one to judge: That's how I bought my $30K Nissan Pathfinder, my $1000 couch (never even sat on it), hell the wife & I looked at our $600K house for all of 5 mins before leaving without a disclosure packet, then decided the next day to bid on it. We weren't even sure which one it was when we came back for the walkthrough
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1) Overview of what I did, why I did it, and how it helped. 5mins
2) CQC Overview & Architecture 5min
2) How to physically hook devices up to an HTPC for control - 5mins
3) How to tell CQC you have devices connected, and use it to easily create and render a screen to control them in realtime - 45mins
4) How to setup ElkRP to monitor your devices 15mins
5) How to use CQC's event manager and the Elk together to perform the following: 15mins
5a) scheduled tasks (i.e., irrigation, turn off all devices at midnight)
5b) triggered tasks (i.e., turn off all devices when you ArmAway the Elk. turn on the light when you open the closet door)