Are you feeling pushed by the sale? There will always be another sale. Plus, if it's the same mom and pop place, you can just flat out ask them if you can put a deposit down on the sale price now, and decide which you want later. The worst they can say is "no". If you're ready to start installing, then you need to make a decision. Otherwise, you can wait until you've pinned down the other costs and know whether the more expensive one is worth it for the looks. I'm pretty sure the guts of every Advantium with the same power rating is the same, but I had to have the most expensive one they make altogether because the control panel is beige rather than black and I just didn't want that big ol' black stripe. It wasn't nearly as big a bump up in price as you're looking at, but my point is sometimes if you can afford to spend a little more for looks, it is worth it. Other than feeling a bit foolish before I pulled the trigger, I've been nothing but happy with my choice. Have you tried the magnetic knob on the Gaggenau? It's too much fun!! Like playing air hockey. :) It makes controlling the unit intuitive as well. I'll give you a hint: Cooking is pretty easy. Even the extravagant stuff. The trick is to master the easier stuff first so that you already know the basic steps that the extravagant stuff is made up of. The best way to learn is to get determined and do it. Just put aside a few hours for something you can make ahead and use out of the fridge, so you don't have to worry about when it's done, and buy some ingredients. Do you eat spaghetti? Have you ever made your own sauce? That's a great place to start. It's pretty hard to mess up. Just don't let it get too hot, keep stirring, so you don't scorch the bottom, and be patient for the flavors to come together. Soups and stews are beginner easy too. Once you have a container of what you've made in the fridge, it's easy to just warm it up with some accompaniments for a dinner. With the s. sauce, make a salad and some pasta, and heat the sauce, just the same as if you bought it. For a vegetable soup, you can pan grill sausage or tofu, toast some garlic bread, and warm the soup. You get the idea. By separating the big cooking from the heat stuff up cooking, it becomes manageable.

So I got the Miele Diamante Plus G2143SC installed yesterday. I ran it through two Rinse & Hold cycles first and then did a Pot Scrubber with detergent added so that the inside was clean of any manufacturing residue. I loaded it up with lunch and dinner dishes and pans that evening and ran it on the Normal program (the Turbo mode was off). I stayed near the kitchen the entire time and it sounded like it filled with water, pre-washed, drained, filled, pre-washed again (why?), drained, filled, washed (heard detergent door open), drained, filled, rinsed, drained, dried. Also, during the end rinse (which took about 30 minutes total), the last 15 minutes it sounded louder, like it was using higher water pressure. The entire time using the Normal cycle from start to end when it drained the final rinse water was 2 hours! The original GE Profile I had 3 years ago took about an hour using Normal, and the Electrolux from 2 years ago was about 1.5 hours. Tonight I going to use Normal again, but also with the Turbo mode turned on and see if there is any difference. Whenever it starts to fill with water, there is a slight is slight gurgling sound, but it only last for about 5 seconds and then fills pretty quite. During the pre-wash, wash, and rinse, it was very quite while running (more so than the GE and Electrolux I owned). I did hear (at the local Miele showroom) a Optima in use a few weeks ago (it has Q3 noise level) and I think it was a tad bit quieter than this Diamante (Q2 noise level) but not by much. When we checked it this morning, everything was perfectly clean (dishes, posts, pans, plastic cups (we don't use real glass glasses too often), and silverware. The plastic cups were dry except on a few that concave on the top where there was some water puddle. There was also a plastic storage container that was used to store left-overs. It was clean, but also has some water on the top part. Everything else was dry and spotless. So with only 1 use down, we're relatively happy with our purchase, and baring any problems down the road, I'd consider buying Miele again. A few other nice things about the way it's made, unlike most other dishwashers (including the GE and Electrolux we had), is that the exterior has it's own sealed enclosure on the sides and top, where most other brands you can see the fiber-insulation on the sides and top. This unit was side mounted (due to granite counters). The way it works is there's two screws on each side top and bottom, right before the water-seal. But instead of it drilling into the sides of the cabinet, they instead push a piece of metal onto the side of the cabinet that hold the dishwasher in place. This is nice, as it eliminates any drilling into the wood, but still holds it very firmly.

Ditto here with Dacor, but 12 years I think. Not sure about recent GW Dacor customer service though (use GW search if you choose).

Cheryl, if you look up to my second or third post, you'll find a link to a page where someone has done some of the work. Your mileage may differ, but when I looked at my own numbers (and after speaking with a salesman on the phone), I realised that the cost savings were completely negligeable. Furthermore, regarding efficiency, I am quite surprised to hear such an argument from a physicist. Because the efficiency of the means of cooking should be evaluated not merely with respect to the time and place where the heat is produced, but in the case of transmitted energy, with respect to the time and place where the electricity is produced. Put otherwise, electricity is not an energy source, it is means of transmitting energy, and evaluated on that basis, it is horribly inefficient. As someone with a technical background as well, I would argue that electricity is much too high quality and inefficient to be used for anything that does not *require* electricity, such as electronics, lighting, and of course many industrial processes. My aim, which I have pulled back from slightly, was to have electricity only for lighting and electronics. But the technical difficulties of the gas oven, coupled with the fact that there is no cost savings, have caused me to back away from that plan just slightly. Regarding induction, I've put that on hold for two reasons: (1) I still haven't seen how I can get "wraparound" heat with induction without buying new pans that would have to be even more expensive than the existing copper, and, even if I did, they couldn't, unless I'm missing something, have that same wraparound conductivity because of the non-cuprous metals required for the "sandwich." Having that wraparound heat in a conical sauteuse is something I don't want to give up. (2) There is some mumbling to the effect that there may eventually be induction plates that work with copper and other non-ferrous metals. Which brings me to a third point, namely, (3) Induction is an electronic technology. At my age ;-(, I have by now seen how long it takes for such a technology to mature many times. Microwaves are *still* improving, 40 years after they first appeared. My father in law in Germany had a complete Miele kitchen from the 80's, with a gull-wing microwave that weighed about 10kg (the door) and a first-generation Ceran cooktop that took 50-10 mins to begin to heat up. I'm not saying that induction hasn't matured, but I rather worry that I will be dissatisfied with how my induction tech compares to the standard in 5 years. By contrast, with gas, I know exactly what I'm getting. In fact, I suspect that the top-end Miele burners I get now will be impossible to get in five years, because the quality of mechanical products continues to drop. So, I think I've convinced myself. Induction can be added later, but there is no need to act now.