With thermostat technology available now it is very easy to have full control of what type of heat you are using and when. The stats use an outdoor temp sensor and can be set to run the heat pump in one set of temperatures and the alternate source at other temps and also run one or the other or both depending on the temperature so you can get the best bang for your heating buck. If its above 35 degrees my heat strips are totally locked out unless there is an unlikely defrost needed. If it is below 35 the stat will run the heat pump and stage in strips as needed down to I believe 10 degrees the heat pump is deactivated and it only operates on the heat strips until the temperature comes back up outside. This allows seamless control with no need to get up and make any adjustments other than picking the temperature you want inside the home. The stat can still be manually set to emergency heat or auto mode just like the old systems. If gas prices shoot up you can set the pump to run on down to whatever temp you want say 10 degrees or not even shut off at all. If gas prices drop you can have the heat pump locked out totally or at say 40 degrees. It sounds like it might be worthwhile to check into or start considering upgrading the whole system but until then a fan motor and or capacitor isn't a massive undertaking or expense. BTW at temps above 30 degrees a heat pumps efficiency really ramps up.

There is another little trick on these "half HE" (I like that term) TL agitator models with the automatic water levels. When you turn the "Fabric Softener" switch to "Yes" regardless of whether or not you are actually using fabric softener, it will fill the tub all the way, bypassing the load sensing function. To the OP, I respect your desire to get an old-fashioned TLer with a water level switch, but keep in mind that even with those machines, they have energy-saving features that make them different than they were in good ol' days. Specifically, water temperatures. Due to minimum efficiency requirements, manual water level machines can no longer wash in "true" hot water, i.e., straight from the hot water tap. It mixes about 1/3rd cold water into the hot when set to "hot", "dumbing down" the water to about 100F. Same thing with "warm". Warm used to be half hot and half cold, resulting in water of about 85-90F. Now, they use about 2/3rd cold and 1/3rd hot, resulting in "warm" water of about 78F. Do these lower temperatures still get clothes clean? Sure. Do they get them "clean enough"? That's hard to say, but thermal energy is part of the laundry equation, and when you take it out... "True" HE machines, because they use less water to start with, do not have these dumbed-down temps. They still use true hot and warm that is really warm. Millions of people have bought the Cabrios and Bravos, and have been perfectly satisfied, despite what some reviews say.

The glass in the Cabrio lid is probably laminated like the windshield in a car. I'm guessing that it's also tempered as well so that the surface of the glass is always in tension. This would explain the thousand cracks. One of the laminations is probably cracked, while the other lamination is probably still intact, accounting for the good amount of rigidity that's remaining. The only way that something like this could reasonably happen is if the glass received an impact somehow, and since the lid is spring balanced, it's not likely that it could drop fast enough by itself to create a big enough impact, unless of course that either the hinge, or the balance spring is broken. Can you tell which of the laminations is shattered? If it's the bottom lamination you can rule out something dropping onto the the top surface.

From my own recent experience...I agree with Raven. I had shut down IE some time ago and then decided it might be well advised to reopen it to have the option of a second browser. I, basically, live in the Firefox world so it'll take some re-educating to get used to IE again. In any case...IE appeared to be broken when I attempted to resurrect it. My home page wouldn't load correctly and there were a few other little annoyances. I discovered...after tearing my hair out for a while...that it, indeed, was an add-on that was causing the problem. In my case...it was Adobe's shockwave flash and their regular flash. I disabled both and viola...IE v.11 is happy again. When I have more time I'll test other flash versions and mosey around IE to see what else I can do...but for the time being...it's very functional. HTH Anne