Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Link: http://www.cuisinart.com/catalog/product.php?product_id=515&item_id=627&cat_id=3

For more than 2 years, possibly even longer than 3 years... I have been thinking of replacing my coffee maker.

The coffee maker I have now is a Black & Decker Spacemaker, of approximately 15-16 years. They just don't make them like this anymore...current model Black & Decker Spackmaker Coffee Makers don't compare either. Though I was leaning towards giving up my search and getting one anyways. Except the old one basically still works, just the stopper seal on the removable water tank is starting to lose its elasticity.

At first, I was looking for another drip coffee maker. More likely something in a regular paper basket type filter, because I had tried other types before and they didn't yield the same coffee experience.

The later the office got a Flavia coffee maker. This thing was cool...it was single serve machine, where I needed to use two packets on large to get close to filling my cup....but I could do more than just coffee. I could have tea, or hot chocolate or whip up cappuccinos...at work. I thought about getting one of these at home.... But, I wasn't sure if it was really something I wanted at home. The special packets wasn't something I was sure I could justify. Plus I belong to a coffee club where I'm getting coffee on a regular basis....and I occasionally indulge in coffees such as Hawaiian Kona or Jamaican Blue Mountain. There was even a time where I was considering going on another cruise with a port in Jamaica, just so that I could get some more cheap Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Follow up:

But, then I got laid off and that put that on hold...and now I have a lot less means in my new job...so it is pretty remote that I would do that route now.

So, I was back to looking for a new coffee maker...a little over a year ago...the stopper on the water tank lost more spring to it, so I was starting to worry that it would close to death. I fiddled with it and it seemed okay....so far it is still working.

Then recently, I was watching an episode of Geek Brief....where Cali Lewis was reviewing the Jura Capresso Impressa J5 Coffee and Espresso Maker. Seemed like an amazing machine, until I heard that it costs $5K

Ya, I don't think that's what I'm going to spend on my next coffee maker. But, it did get me looking at coffee makers like that. There were lower end models in that line.... namely the Impressa E8 or the Impressa E9. Could I justify forking out just under $1K for a coffee maker?

I put them on my Amazon.com wishlist, continued to research the units and then expanded to look at its competition. The fully automatic nature was certainly interesting, and the fact that I didn't have to use pods was the kind of thing I wanted.

I started coming across coffee maker review sites and blogs.....and then found that Capresso makes a semi-automatic unit....~$300. Still pretty expensive, but at least in reach. But, then I don't know where...but I came across the Cuisinart SS-1 and some positive reviews. ~$200 is a price point that I could go with.

So I decided that someday I would pull the trigger and get this one.

That day came last week, when the pricedrop extension in Firefox alerted me that the price had recently dropped to ~$180. And, I did have $50 in Amazon.com gift certificates on my account. So, I pulled the trigger and ordered over on the weekend. I have Amazon Prime, so it had an ETA of Wednesday, May 21st.

And this morning UPS delivered it. I then sent a Tweet that it had arrived and went off to work, and that I would play with it later. Plus I needed to clear some space for it, and I wasn't in the mood to finish the cleaning....

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