Your posts were a few months ago but I have a Hot Top. Love it. The picture you included is of an older model. There are two current models basically referred to as B and P. B is the basic, P the programmable. I have the B. It is programmable but not to the extent of the P. Basically with the B you do a roast controlling the heat and fan. Then you can save the steps you made in the roast as program 1,2, or 3
The only real weakness of the Hot Top is the probe. The temperature displayed is not really the bean or drum. Due to the location of the probe it is sort of a hybrid of both.
I added an Omega datalogger to the roaster with two probes. One for drum and one for bean temp. This gives very accurate readings. The neat thing about the approach is I did not modify the roaster. I just bought another vent cover for $6 and modified that.
Coffee Troupe » Blog Archive » Omega Datalogger and the HotTop
This is my blog writeup on the installation.