Only a true, salt-type water softener will actually soften your well water. Any other device is nothing but smoke and mirrors designed to extract money from you but not any water hardness.

In addition to the water softener, you need an iron filter to handle the high concentration of iron in your water. A water softener isn't designed to perform that function. I urge you to take a sample of your water to an INDEPENDANT water testing laboratory and have it analyzed. Once you know all of the issues with your water, a system can be designed to deal with those issues so that you can stop buying bottled water.

There are devices available which will soften your water, remove the iron, remove bad taste, remove bacteria and so forth but those items have to be sized for the job at hand. All water is wet but water from different sources contains different amounts of dissolved substances. Consult your Yellow Page directory to find a lab near you.

You can find lots of info about drinking water and indpendant lab locations near you here ...

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/labs/index.html

EWS provides a variety of different water treatment components, including softeners, RO, iron removal units, GAC (granular activated carbon) units, etc. They don't sell those goofy magnetic things, unless the company you're referring to is different from the one I am familiar with. It's anybody's guess, however, what you local store is referring to when they say 'water conditioner.' Often, that means GAC, which won't solve your iron problem. However, they may mean an iron removal unit, which could go a long way toward solving your problem. A water test is necessary to make a decision. You want to know: pH, TDS (total dissolved solids), alkalinity, hardness, iron and the very least. If you water (pre-softener) has any objectionable color or smell, then you also want nitrates, sulfur, sulfates. It may be that you need a softener as well as iron removal - only testing will tell.

EWS does sell a GAS unit that has what they call ICN (increase calcite nucleation), which MAY (and that's a huge maybe) affect the some properties of the hardness in your water, right up until the point that you heat the water. Basically, hardness in your water doesn't cause problems until you heat the water and it drops out of solution and forms scale, so this unit, if it does anything at all, will 'prevent' scale in your cold water pipes where you wouldn't have scale anyway, but will do nothing to prevent scale in the hot water heater, pipes and fixtures. The only way to prevent hardness scale is to remove the hardness from your water - that's why we buy softeners.

Thanks to all for your advice.
We didn't know anyone who has the EWS installed, so we were a little leery. Another company recommended a whole house RO (reverse Osmosis), but that wastes too much water. We are in the process of remodeling and the water softner is disconnected. Thought this might be a good time to see if there are other options. We do plan to have our water tested again, in any case.