No need to program your DVR to watch a TV series, just jump to each episodes starting time and then jump over the commercials.

No, see, the premise is lame uses, not awesome and entirely reasonable ones. XD

The lamest use for a time machine in fiction: In Harry Potter, Hermione used a time spell to attend two lectures which she wouldn't be able to do as they were held at the same time.

Not a spell but a magical device. You're obviously not an intellectual as from my point of view this is a pretty cool use of a time machine. She did was stupid (or too straight laced) in not using the time turner to get more sleep.

Kind of off thread: As a fan fiction fan I hate it when writers do not realize that time turners cannot change the past. Nothing Hermione and Harry did changed what had happened. But without the time turner Buckbeak would have died. An interesting conundrum about free will versus predestination.

Lamest use of a time machine in fiction is simply called "Doctor Who", one of my favorite show.

To go back to the dawn of adventure gaming, and convice the game devs to put in hit points, weapons, and a cover system. There would be no combat system, but you'd still have those features.

Hogwarts is a high school. There's seldom anything intellectual about high schools. And it's lame because she had a device that could bend time to her will, yet instead of gaining power for her own sinister ends or bringing peace to the world, she used it to attend classes that most students would want to skip anyway (because it's high school, and students do that :p). That was certainly an overkill, since she could have easily learned the material from that course by using different means, such as borrowing her friends' notes or recording the lecture by some magical means for later viewing. Using such a powerful artifact for such a trivial purpose is kind of like using a top-of-the-line freighter truck to pull a children's sleigh, but that's why this threat was created in the first place

Like this?

No, wait; too soon? :p

Keep going back in time to overclock the time machine processor until I've become mico-organism (orga-NI-sm). Now I'm too fu***** stupid and blobby to operate the time machine. What a dick.

Go back in time and steal my own smokes and beer. I would love to see the look on my face.

Yep, much as I love Doctor Who, the writers regularly seem to be a bit lame in how they apply the TARDIS' abilities.

I don't think Hogwarts was just a high school. Seemed like it was also their college, which ups the potential usefulness of the extra lectures IMHO.

& I agree that Hermione would have been well served if she had used the time turner to get some extra sleep as well as those classes. There must have been a problem with arranging it, since she was certainly smart enough otherwise.

Just using a time machine to extend one's nap times would be a lame use of a time machine though

Another lame use would be to go back and watch all the Oscar shows live. I don't think I could stay awake through even one of them

It would be awesome! Did you know humans spend only a third of their life sleeping?

I'm not sure what we would gain using a time machine to extend those naps, unless, like Hermione we are packing too much into the current days and can't change that.

Another lame use of a time machine (presuming there was only the one and it was relatively secret) - would be to review eateries and vacation spots over the millennia in order to write a guidebook for it all that no one could use but another time traveler

Bringing back Elvis would be kinda lame....especially now that females shake better lol

Going to the future to avoid having to wait for the next episode of a TV show.