Thanks for the huge plug Brett, appreciate that. And now for some musings from someone that has spent a lifetime in the import, sales and service of machines and grinders... Personally, I find the more you (I) chase bells and whistles outwards and around, the more it brings you back to good old, safe, tried and proven equipment made by good name manufacturers. As you can imagine, I've had quite a few different model machines over the years, and they have all taken me back to my current "simple" E61 heat exchanger ("HX") machine. The only whim I've given in to, is to have a model with a rotary pump instead of a vibrating solenoid pump, and it is certainly smoother and quieter in operation. What does it do? What does any well made coffee machine do? It makes excellent quality brew (insert here dependent on expertise of the driver) with little to no fuss. That's it. End of story. How many coffees a day do I make on average for my investment (say at new equipment cost of roughly 2.5 thou machine and 1 thou grinder = 3.5 thou)...4 a day (2 for me and 2 for spouse). Should I spend more to buy more bells and whistles to get no appreciable difference in either brew or ease of use and reliability? Only an individual can say for themselves... The rest is all internet fueled mumbo jumbo marketing hype disguised as internet reviews..designed to drive people to buy someone's pet brand instead of another brand...and all the angst that causes, when people reading reviews, become very insecure lest they might purchase the "wrong" machine / model / brand. Focus on the important things. Long standing importer / vendor / brand? Service availability? Ability to be serviced easily by others? Demonstrably, a "good machine"? Good price? anything else is just icing. If we run side by side blind tests on you (or any number of consumers) to pick the difference in overall performance and quality of coffees made from different brand/model semi commercial machines in a range of prices from say 2 to 5 thou thou, will anyone be able to pick differences and if so what do the differences mean? If differences are found, will they be significant enough to justify large differences in price? I guess it depends on the individual... Moon, if you want to explore something with me, I am here. If you want to explore something elsewhere, no problem, just try not to get sucked into hype which is designed to manipulate your buying choices and drive you to certain brands, or to spend lots of money on intangible dangling carrots.
