My Kude60 Kitchen Aid arrived today! OMG... I know I could just be doing a self fulfilling prophecy thing here but let me tell you - The drawers are totally gliding, like they're on Ice, no side to side shuffle to get them out! And they do the up and down thing like an elevator with the push of a button. Am I too happy to see my Bosch leaving? I can't remember, I didn't even wave as the technician strapped it like Hannibal Lector to the dolly and wheeled it out! Me and the KUDE60 are going to be best friends...I can just feel it. But then, if this is the excitment of my day, what kind of review can you really trust me with? LOL I will let you know. Thanks again for the tip, Monicakm!!! Here is a link that might be useful: Here it is the KUDE60

I think the major question is what will you be putting down the disposal. If no corn husks or artichoke leaves and no bones other than chicken bones plus your ability to switch out a disposal if needed and Costco's great return policy equals a great dollar value. If like me you live where raccoons,dogs, and crows get into trash containers and you will grind most food waste then either Evolution Excel,Viking 1000 or for heavy bone grinding even an ISE LC50-light commercial rating-high list price but recently I see a few online around $500.,could be a more trouble free choice. My previous ISE 77,not777,worked 19 years before leaking. 3 years ago I read Volsboy's advice here on GardenWeb and since the Evolution Excel was not sold here in Canada then,it is now, I bought the Viking 1000-10 yr warranty,on sale,it is great but the EXCEL is probably the quietest disposal you can buy,try the in store demo.

If etching is mostly attributable to whole-house water softeners, maybe I'm in luck. I just checked my city's water hardness and it says 5-something. Do the hardness components cancel out the etching components? That sounds promising. Last night was the old Kenmore's final run. I put in a cookie sheet with stuck eggplant (first time ever washing a cookie sheet in the DW) and a gas burner (an attempt at baba ghanoush that ended up getting tossed). Other dishes went in unrinsed. The old girl cleaned everything perfectly. Waah, I'll miss her, noisy and white-plasticky as she was. She just did her job without pretense. I will miss her wide open spaces and niches that would accommodate just about anything. Sniff.

These days almost all dishwashers clean well so generally the differences are features, quietness, interior style, etc. Sadly, this isn't true. The Frigidaire mid range (~$600) we put in a year ago is hands down the WORST dishwasher I've owned or used. It's definitely worse at washing dishes than the 10yr old bought-on-craigslist PORTABLE dishwasher it replaced. It's VERY unlike DH to consider replacing a new or near new item (often regardless of how well it works) and we've had several discussion about replacing it. If we weren't moving in the spring we probably would be replacing it. I had a hard time talking him into this DW (he wanted something in the $300 range) but I don't think we'll cheap out on a DW again.