I know this is a little late in posting, but I wanted to actually use it for a while before reporting back. We finally got it installed a little over a month ago and I'm so far very happy with it. We got the SHE68T56UC as I couldn't find enough differences with the 800 series that I cared about. It is very quiet, it fits way more stuff than my old dishwasher did, it doesn't dry things quite as good as I would like, but plastics are no different than the old one. The one drawback I do have is that my tall pot doesn't fit unless I rearrange the racks which to me is more of a pain than washing it by hand. Dishes comes out way cleaner and my glasses that had some kind of white haze that I thought was etching are returning to looking clear again. I only switched the dishwasher - not the detergent. It does take about an extra 40 min than my old dishwasher, but it hasn't bothered me as I can fit so much that at times I end up putting some stuff in and running it not completely full as there isn't enough space to fit more plastics for example or glasses in the top and the bottom isn't fully filled. I have yet to be left with anything on the counter to feel like it is taking too long to run so I can load it again. Edit: Forgot to add that I don't pre-wash the dishes except to scrape off large stuff, but DH does pre-wash, although he is starting to come around. So each wash is a mix of the two. Hopefully I can get a chance to test out it with nothing pre-washed at all, but I think it will perform well. I took the wash filter out to clean as the installer said to do it if things started to smell. It didn't smell, but I figured I'd make it a monthly thing just so I it wouldn't get there. There was nothing in the filter so really didn't need to do it. I'm sure as I go along I'll figure out how often it will need to be done. This post was edited by lyfia on Wed, Mar 12, 14 at 12:32

Get both options. Go to the appliance forum for great discussions with up to the minute reviews about any price range of dw. They will tell you about sound and reliability. We got our Bosh at a scratch and dent for a great price. If you shop carefully, you will both get what you want.

Buying used cabinets isn't all that complicated if you're planning on changing the look anyway. You might not find the uppers crl_ describe above, but you might find all the lowers, for example, and then buy the uppers new. We currently have four different styles of door/drawer fronts in our kitchen with different finishes. We are reusing all our lower cabinets from our old kitchen, a few moved and re-purposed. The three unmatched cabinets consist of three 4-drawer stacks, one 3-drawer stack, and a 36" sink base and cost us a total of $375. You would be hard-pressed to find just one of these cabinets new at that price. We want a modern look so we will put new slab fronts on. Probably from Barker. We will probably get paint-grade fronts and paint everything but we are also considering finished fronts and then refacing the fronts of the cabinet boxes ourselves. Either way, we are saving thousands by doing this. I did once see at the Habitat Re-Store in Seattle a huge collection of cabinets removed from the same kitchen. Enough to outfit 2-3 more normal sized kitchens. They looked brand new to me. Soft-close drawers and cabinets. I didn't check closely for brand but the drawers seemed to have good quality glides. I suspect it was removed because it was very Tuscan with off-white finish with a glaze. Not to everyone's taste. But could have been stained with GF or painted and would have looked lovely in a more traditional or even transitional kitchen. I've seen other complete kitchens in good condition but this was definitely the largest matching set I've seen. I've also seen many complete bathroom sets in great condition. Quite often we advise people here not to do a new kitchen just to sell because the new owners might just rip it out to put in their own kitchen anyway. I suspect you'll see quality kitchens at Re-Stores or other salvage stores more often near high-end housing where this is probably more typical. The Seattle store gets all the kitchens in King County so that includes areas all the HCOL areas. The Habitat Re-Store in Bellevue sends kitchens to the Seattle location but keeps other items and, wow!, I have seen some amazing things there. A friend got a pristine 36" SS FD fridge/freezer, with ice-maker, water dispenser, and the drawer between freezer/fridge sections for $700 and everything works. There was a teensy crack in one of the door shelves. She put some clear shipping tape on it and it's covered by food so you don't even see it, Time to shop for my finds? Not much. We go to plays in Seattle quite often so, when we did, we took the pick-up and left early enough to stop at the Tacoma and Seattle Re-Stores each time until we found the sizes we needed. It took three trips. So not counting travel time since we were going that way anyway, maybe 4-5 hours total. I realize this isn't for everyone and that's OK but it's really not that difficult. And, if you're going to reface and get new fronts, you could always, for example, purchase those from a place like Barker or other RTA site and then also purchase whatever cabinets you weren't able to find second-hand from them, too. Oh, we recently decided to put storage on the back side of our peninsula instead of an overhang and I want at least part of it to be glass fronts. We're going to Seattle several times in Jan-Feb so we'll be checking out those places for more cabinets. If we can't find anything that will work and that will look the way I want, we'll just order new. We saved enough on everything else so that buying these new isn't something that puts us over budget. Sorry for writing a book but cheapie-me is just really into this type of stuff. :)

This Miele dishwasher is crazy loud compared to the way it's marketed. I am so disappointed that I got it. It really isn't noticeably quieter than the 10 year old Bosh it replaced. I think it might have gotten a bit louder now than it was when first installed a few months ago. I'm in another room now with the door closed and I can still hear it very clearly. The regular water noise is a white noise that isn't that bad and can be somewhat ignored, but the sound of dishes moving around when the spray hits them is very loud and distracting. Exactly what I didn't want. The sales person flat out lied or was ignorant when saying the red light that shines on the floor is needed because the dishwasher is so quiet you need the light to know that it's running. The red light's only use to me is so that I know if the drying cycle is on. Drying is the only quiet cycle where anyone not legally deaf could even question whether the dishwasher is running or not. Not sure if the difference between by 42 dba model and the top of the line models 39/40 dba models is enough to make a really noticeable difference or of there a way to load the dishes so they don't make so much noise. Is a 2 or 3 dba quieter dishwasher from the same manufacturer (some manufacturer measure sound differently) really going to be very noticeable difference?