You won't get many different answers here than you got on the kitchen forum - the main brands people like are Miele, Bosch, Asko, and KA - alhtough each brand has its supporters and detractors. I suggest you search on this forum for threads on the different brands - you'll get lots of info.

I'm actually surprised at the problems you had with your GE Profile. These days, most DWs clean pretty well - the difference is noise level and features. My mother's appartment has a GE Profile DW and it's more than adequate.

I wonder if the problem with the poor cleaning with your current dishwasher is the automatic soap dispenser. Most DW manufacturers recommend using powders, not liquids.

Hi Weissman:

Believe me, we are surprised too! We'd always had good experience with GE in the past - hence the reason we bought it this time around.

I have not tried powdered dishwasher soap. That is the only thing I can think of that we have not tried. Thanks for the suggestion - I'll give that a shot on our next load.

Boxie

We have hard water. This works perfectly - Asko + Electrasol. Uses only about 4 g per wash! Run it every day for the past 5 years! No scrubbing needed. everything goes in there - Fine China, knives, pots and pans, sponges, flower pots :)

Do you have a high loop in the drain hose from the DW before it enters the disposal or drain pipe (or an air gap)? If not, you might be getting dirty water backing up into the DW.

You've already heard this from others but I think Kitchenaid is hard to beat for the price. I've had one twice now and I love the way it loads and cleans. Bosch and Miele are probably a little more "silent" but KA is quiet enough for me. I chose it because I wanted heated drying and the built-in food disposer and I liked the way it loaded. I'm about to replace my DW at our beach house and I'm buying the low-end KA (around $600 on sale from Sears).

We bought a top of the line Bosch a couple of years ago and are crazy about it. Our son has a GE profile that works just fine and is almost as quiet as our Bosch.

I remember reading somewhere a long tome ago that you really need to match your dishwasher with the right detergent. So before you give up on your machine, try at least one or two different detergents, or call the customer service 800# and ask them what kind of detergent they recommend. That may be the reason for your problem, plus maybe it wasn't installed right, as somebody else suggested.

Good luck.

Well, I tried a very small load this afternoon. (I couldn't wait for it to fill up to try it!) I used a Cascade Two-In-One Action Pack that we had leftover from PRE-remodel. They are a little pillow looking thing that has powdered dishwasher soap on one half, and Dawn dish soap in the other.

We just returned home, and MUCH to our surprise (a good one!), the dishes came out spotless. I even used the "quick cycle" on it. I'm trying not to get overly excited yet, I want to try a full dirty load before I consider the problem fixed.

Although the horrible rack problem won't be going away - I think that's something I can live with. Dirty dishes is not.

I sure would like it if the dirty dishes problem is fixed tho! I had tried 3 different dishwasher liquids, none working any better than the other.

The little light is now on that indicates the liquid in the automatic dispenser is empty.

If the liquid vs powder is not the problem, I'll see about that hose suggestion.

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions, and I'll post again once I try a full dirty load.

Good news, so far. Even if the powder is the solution to the dirty dish problem, you should still check to make sure you have a high loop in the drain hose. My DW wasn't installed with a high loop and four years later I thought I had a little leak in the DW. I called a repairman who checked it out and said I had a common problem. Since I didn't have a high loop, water and regular dishwashing soap from my sink was backing up into the dishwasher and oversudsing, causing the water level to rise too high and cause a little bit of an overflow. He put in a high loop and had me run a few rinse cycles to flush out the dishwashing liquid and the problem was solved.

Weismann: I haven't spoken to my husband yet about this high loop thing, but is there a way to check this without pulling the dishwasher out? Who would've installed this high loop thing - the plumber or the GC who installed out dishwasher? Just wondering if I couldn't just ask whichever guy it was ... if they did the high loop thing?
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me with this.
---Boxie

Not surprised with your problems with a GE dishwasher (well, any GE appliance really) just not quality products. Even with a discount being a former GE employee we don't buy GE.
We went with a Bosch dw-shu43co6uc/22. We had a 20+ year Maytag that still worked well but in the interest of saving water and energy it was time to buy new. We can actually have a conversation on the phone with the dw running now! It is very quite. Although not the top of the line, (don't use the heated drying,just open the door. Wouldn't use the china cycle,etc.)it cleans extremely well even when I jam a lot of things on the racks. Good luck in your search! NancyLouise

You can tell if there's a high loop by looking under your sink - you don't need to pull out the DW. There will be a drain hose that comes from the dishwasher that connects into your garbage disposal (if you have one) or into your sink drain pipe. That hose should have a loop in it above where it connects into the disposal/drain. It should have been done by whoever installed your DW. If there isn't one, it's not a big deal to add it.

After doing a fair amount of research for the right dishwasher I decided on the kitchen aid. I've had it for about two months now and absolutely love it. It cost about $1500 (stainless steel) with installation and delivery.
Here's what I love about it. quick rinse. we're only two so we don't run it every single day but the quick rinse helps to wash the food off at high temp for in between washes. It washes and dries on the normal cycle just fine. It has a built in garbage disposal -you don't have to clean out a filter. I rinse the food off for the most part before loading. It has an extra cutlery rack on the very top which isn't absolutely necessary for me. I really like the shelf height adjustment for the top cup rack because I can fit pots below and use the "pot scrub" feature which I think is fabulous. I just ran a pyrex through the other day with some stainless steel pots and everything came out spotless. It has a rinse dispenser thing that you fill up once in a while (since installment I haven't run out yet) and then it dispenses for each load. As for the detergent, I just use the electrosol 3in1 tabs. You just put one tab in the compartment and close it up. The KA is well made and I couldn't be happier... of course, I was handwashing for the last 6 years and that took a lot of time and space (drainboard constantly out).I've linked the model I bought below.

Here is a link that might be useful: my Kitchen Aid dishwasher choice

I'm not surprised about the GE dishwasher either. I just had a horrible experience with a GE Monogram dishwasher. I remember all my dishes moving around, too.

Go for the new dishwasher. I got a Kenmore it is much better than the GE but I can't say I just love it. I think I was spoiled by my simple old Maytag.

Heidi

We had similar cleaning problems after we installed our new KA D/W in December. Even more confusing was that one load might come out clean and the next "gritty" and kind of smelly.

It turned out to be a problem with our hot water taking a long time to reach the D/W. If I ran the D/W right after I finished cleaning up the kitchen, the load would come out clean because I'd been running hot water at the sink before starting the D/W. If I started the D/W later (before we went to bed) or used the Delay feature, they would come out dirty. Once I started making sure the water was hot before starting the D/W, all my loads came out clean.

We haven't gotten around to it yet but we need to have a plumber come out and make sure our hot water heaters are set up properly. We have 2 of them and one is directly below the kitchen but I have a feeling that it's not the source of the water for our sink and D/W.

Regarding detergent, when the service person came out to look at the D/W, he noticed that I was using Electrosol 3in1 tablets and he told me that he ONLY recommended powder detergent. I can't remember what he didn't like about liquids but he compared using the tablets to trying to make a bubble bath by throwing a bar of soap in the tub:-) I'm still using them though, because at the time he was here I had just bought a HUGE canister of them.

I recently purchased Asko model D3251 dishwasher as part of a kitchen remodel, and we love it. We've had it for only about two months, but I am thoroughly impressed with it. It replaced a 12 year old top-of-the-line Kenmore, so the difference in performance is amazing. We've had not cleaning problems at all.

We have hard water, and use Electosol powder. I use very little soap (Less than 1 Tablespoon for the main wash, and about 1 teaspoon for the pre-wash) and I also use a rinse agent. The dishes come out extremely clean all the time. The machine is amazingly quiet, so quiet in fact it's hard to know that it is running.

I think the price was around $1300, but that was part of an appliance package.

I also was impressed by Bosch, but just liked the Asko better. I like having the 3 year warrantee that the Asko's offer.