Time to Renew My Morning
Posted by Doug Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:26:51 GMT
It may seem mundane to you, but I’m very excited about my new coffee pot! I got a Mr. Coffee 10-Cup, Black with Brushed Chrome Accents, Thermal Programmable Coffeemaker – ISTX85. It’s one of those appliances I use very regularly, but don’t upgrade very often.
My last coffee maker was one of those freebies from Gevalia (this i the funniest story about Gevalia I’ve read). I really liked that it used a thermal carafe instead of those “warming plates” (aka coffee scorchers). The down side was that it was white plastic and only 8 cups. After years of use, the white plastic parts had become quite stained. Also, it was taking 45 minutes to brew those meager 8 cups! I know I could have run vinegar through it like 100 times to get all the calcification out; but I’m too lazy for that.
This new coffee maker has a chrome carafe; so no stains to worry about. It also has a timer! Seems like a small thing, but it’s very exciting to wake up to coffee already made. Catering to my lazy nature, it’s also got some type of a sensor that tells me when it needs to be cleaned/de-calicfied and then an automatic mode for doing the cleaning. All I have to do is mix up the vinegar solution when it tells me and press a buttong. The one thing I wish it had is a built in grinder. I’m going for the ultimate laziness here! I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it though.
Speaking of which, it’s not every day you get to rip off Wal-Mart. You can see on the web site above that the MSRP for this coffee maker is $59.99. I found it at Target for $56. Wal-Mart had it for $54. However, the “display” unit was labeled as an 8-cup maker for $38. I asked for help from someone and said I wanted the 8-cup version. She looks around and doesn’t see any boxed up, “Sorry, we’re sold out.” So, she let me buy the display unit! I could see boxed versions of “mine” clearly labeled as a 10-cup for $54. But they still let me have it for $38! So I guess the net result is that I got the maker for $16 less and helped push more jobs over to China.
