Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

[Originally review January 2009 (3 stars), Updated July 2010] We bought one of these for our home and liked it so much I got another for my office. It is a quick safe way to boil water. It works much better than our teapot on our conventional stove and you can leave the room without worry about all the water boiling out and a possible fire. It is so efficient that we often use it to heat up water before putting it in a pan on the stove. It is much faster. When we are making pasta we will put a small amount of water in a large pan and fill the teapot. The water in the pot is boiling before the water on the stove. The pot is light, even when full, and has no aftertaste like I have read some of the plastic ones do. HOWEVER, we had owned our home pot for less than six months when the 'on' switch broke off. The pot was still usable, but you have to reach in and activate it with a fingernail. It was under limited warranty, but that involved mailing it to San Diego at our own cost and sending them a check for $8 to have it returned. Including the time and materials to package it up and then drive to the post office and have it gone for 2-4 weeks wasn't worth the effort. I have concluded we just got a lemon. Because this happened and the warranty policy was so cumbersome, I originally gave this 3 stars. But our other one is working fine and the broken piece has turned out to be a small inconvenience, so I have revised my rating to 4.6, rounding up to 5.