Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought my first Vita-mix in the early 1990s. It was expensive (even more than the current price, adjusting for inflation) but I spent the money since my mother swore by hers. It had a metal container with smooth sides and a spout near the bottom. The base was huge. It would chop/blend anything, no matter how full you filled it (the ad showed it chopping blocks of wood. After a very happy party we tried that with a box of 2" pencils - the kind with no erasers. We ended up with sawdust.) This was my vegetable juice period - I would fill the Vita-Mix with carrots, celery, raw beets and turnips up to the top of the unit; in 15 minutes it had ground them up with such velocity that I had hot soup. I could fill it with 3 lbs of cold cream cheese, six eggs, and a cup of sour cream and it would liquefy them for cheesecake. I go into this detail because: When I arrived in NYC a couple of years ago, I found to my dismay that my Vita-mix had been lost in transit. Since it was a major part of my kitchen, I immediately ordered a new one. I was quite shocked when it arrived with a plastic container with ridged insides, and a smaller base. However, I immediately used it to make a cheesecake. It tried for a minute - at which time I smelled something burning. Then it shut itself off. I called the company and was informed that this was a safety feature. It seems I had overloaded the blender. I told them that this had never been a problem on my old machine, but since it was probably made before the young lady helping me was born, she could offer no comment on this. I then tried my vegetable juice and had the same result. I sent it in to be serviced; they said nothing was wrong with it. It has failed me on many subsequent occasions. Jobs that were routine with my old machine would elicit the now-familiar burning smell and 'safety shutoff'. Today I threw it out. I guess if you've never experienced the old one, the new one might be OK, but I certainly don't think it's worth the exorbitant price. It is, sadly, another example of an established company cutting corners to boost the profit margin