Why wouldn't you buy a wi-fi kettle? It seems so useful, after all: wake up, grab your phone and get a brew started before you've even got out of bed.

That's the idea, at least. But it wasn't what Mark Rittman experienced when he spent 11 hours simply trying to get his internet kettle to boil in a gripping battle with the future that is being thrust upon us.

Rittman, a data analyst, was trying to set up his Smarter iKettle, a £99.99 appliance controlled by a smartphone app that can also check how much water is in it. "Hanging around the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil is a thing of the past. Whether you’re super efficient or ultra lazy the iKettle will save you over two days a year," its website chirps.

Shortly before 9am, Rittman said he had attempted to boil the kettle, but was hampered by a forced-debugging, which consequently caused its base station to reset.