There will be an absolute proliferations of such devices but the 'right' approach, if such a thing exists remains to emerge because until we know what kind of questions we want to ask it, then it's rather hard to specify the nature of the data logger and without the data logger we can't gather the data to decide what sort of questions to ask. This is why you are seeing many seemingly differing answers, and luckily this community understands enough of the issues to not push any one over any other.
I've got the weather tools book as well and as you say it's very good, but don't be fooled into believing that there are favored coding approaches to using the one-wire kit. Java is certainly preferred by some and others like C, but these are really just glue that bolts components together. I've done this for the Navitron system;
http://www.pachube.com/feeds/1266 and as I hope you can see it's handling a fair few temperature probes inside a tank. Now this uses owfs
http://www.owfs.org/ django
http://www.djangoproject.com/ and as little python code
http://www.python.org/ as I could get away with writing and yet it is now sitting up on pachube
http://www.pachube.com next to systems of considerably different parentage, and that is really the important point, its the standardization of the data that will allow standard tools to analyse and react to the data because everyone is standardizing.
For the moment, I would, in your position, place a couple of one-wire sensors in a rj-45 socket box of some sort ( two computer sockets, and a plastic back box from a mains socket is probably the easiest way of doing it) and then after plugging the box into your one-wire dongle test the various one-wire reading mechanisms that exist. Don't just settle for the first one that works, try several and you will quickly start to contrast and compare the differing techniques. Once you've done that concentrate on connecting to pachube, and try to follow how that mechansim works. Donig that you have avoided a lot of data storing, displaying and handling, which if you start down either the C or Java root will tend to grow around you.
Try to do as little coding yourself, cos that will be the bits that cause the problems. You can be sure that better solutions will emerge, and that is what everyone round here is working on. It's fascinating how suddenly this has become quite an issue cos we've been chatting about it for over a year now and it's an idea that's time has probably come.
You are joining at the stage when you will be getting your fingers dirty, from which you will learn a lot, because quite what aspects are important are known only to you so your interest will require you to learn how to sort throu' very large amounts of data to find the aspect that is of useful to you alone.
Maybe that isn't what you want to hear but even the small list of things you wish to do will require a fair bit of hardware effort on your part ( deciding if a pump is on or off with one-wire involves sensing the behavior of mains electricity and that is something that has a couple of fairly life threatening gotcha's if you ain't able to predict possible problems). But without a simple mechanism t test one-wire that sort of thing becomes doubly difficult. (is this not working cos my pump circuitry is cr*p or is my code awful)
Using owfs and python on linux the question comes down to typing:
python # start up the python interpretor
import ow # get the ow connection library
ow.init('u') # initialize the one wire usb library
s = ow.Sensor('/') # make a sensor object at the top of the owfs tree
l = s.sensorList() # get all the data from the sensors
for item in l: # loop thou the sensor list
print item.temperature # print out the sensor temeratures
Now that what worked for me, other will have their own approach and if it suits them then they've made the correct choice. The important thing here is what you require to get your one-wire sensors working will not neccasserily be the same elements you use when the system is running properly, and as you make the inevitable changes and alterations you will be revisiting and resoldering various bits and pieces, so you will require enough of an understanding to be able to say that diferent configurations are working correctly or not.
Once you've got a reliable one-wire rig plugging in whatever clever little monitoring box that meets your objectives should be pretty easy and your choice will be yours, which at the end of the day is as it should be rather than mine or wookeys or pauls or kens or anybody elses. It's just the use of something like pachube that will really accelerate all this because we will then be able to compare like with like, even thou' it's been derived by unlike.
Good eh?...
chris@wyleu
