sprocket - at least in my experience the current batch of Persil liquids are quite poor at rinsing and don't clean as well as the P&G liquids. IMO I think, whilst Persil and Ariel are somewhat equal in powders Ariel and Bold liquid are by far better than Persil - but with the new Small & Mighty liquids we'll have to wait and see :-). Sunil - it sounds like somewhere where the German version of The Bill is set :-). Alex - I love those German Persil bottles! Do they have these in the Neterlands at all? I'm going to Amsterdam next week, have Ariel Compact powder on my list and perhaps a pack of Persil Megaperls... any recommendations? Jon

I received my Miele pair in February and really LOVE them. I hope you have such a good experience too! This is what I found on Henkel's site re: megaperls 1994 - Persil Megaperls Pearls instead of powder. Another milestone in Persil's history: the development of a laundry detergent that offered even better washing performance, and with very much smaller doses of the product. For five years, Henkel researchers worked to develop a method that would allow such high concentrations of the active ingredients. The breakthrough was achieved with a completely new production technology - and a new generation of laundry detergents: Pearls instead of powder. 290 milliliters of classic powder could be replaced by 95 milliliters of the new laundry detergent. Persil Megaperls - offered in a lightweight 1.6 kilogram pack with a window gave Henkel a substantial edge in innovation. Patent were filed across Europe for this new laundry detergent technology. I personally find the scent of regular Persil products too much (or I just don't like the actual scent). I do, however, like the Persil Senitive options which have much milder scents. I also use oxygen bleach with my white loads and they are always white and bright. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Persil - History

Roseark...When is your new Electrolux Wave Touch set being delivered??? Your experience with Tide he Powder is the EXACT reason I have decided to NEVER use it again. Over the years with my Miele units, I would always try and go back to Tide he Powder. I actually like the scent A LOT, and it is so affordable and available everywhere. Everytime I used it though, my clothes seemed "coated" and looked dull. Stains and odors were gone, but the clothes did not look bright and fresh. The BIG thing in both my Miele units and also my new Electrolux units, was that after every load using Tide he Powder...the stainless steel wash drums were coated, dull and if you ran your finger across the steel drum & and then looked at your finger..you could see a faint white residue on my finger! Every load! Whites, colours, sheets...warm water, hot water, cold water, sanitize, etc... I called our local water district and asked them, and the said with my zip code we do NOT have "hard" water. Tide just makes my clothes and stainless wash drum look horrible. Love my Persil and actually Sears Ultra Plus he Powder with Stain fighters. It's great and SO, SO cheap!!!

Well, I'm having some of the same adjustment issues with my new FL because I also used liquid detergent and OxiClean powder together in my old TL, predissolved in the wash water before clothes were added. And I'm just not accustomed to using powdered detergents. Before my recent research, I had just assumed that liquids are better. Oxygen bleach works "best" at higher temperatures, meaning it works much faster. But it will also work in cooler water if you give it LOTS of time to soak. I got that tip from Cooks Illustrated, when they tested stain removers. They said that if you don't want to pretreat, OxiClean will get out almost any stain, IF you give it 30 minutes, or ideally 60 minutes, to work. It works for up to 6 hours or so. So, I substituted time for temperature for fabrics I thought couldn't take the heat. With a FL that lets you dispense either liquid or powder but not both, if you want the cleaning power of OxiClean, you should use a powdered detergent: - Tide HE powder - Gain HE powder - Persil Universal Powder (NOTE: there may be other brands similarly formulated, but I have only researched these so far.) Think of these powdered detergents as already containing OxiClean --- PLUS other cleaning agents needed for dirty laundry. OxiClean contains: - sodium carbonate (55-65%) - sodium percarbonate (aka sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate or oxygen bleach) (30-40%) - ethoxylated alcohol C12-16 (2-4%) Sodium carbonate is sometimes called a "builder" because it "softens" mineral ions in hard water. It also buffers a solution to a high pH, which makes other cleaning agents like surfactants work more effectively. Most of the soils and stains in fabrics are acidic, and the high pH helps break them down. Sodium percarbonate is oxygen bleach. It contains a molecule H2O2, which has an unstable, reactive oxygen molecule that's eager to break away and go off on its own, leaving H2O behind. The oxygen molecule oxidizes stains in fabrics. (It's kind of interesting that this same process happens inside our bodies, where the reactive oxygen molecules are called free radicals. Strongly-colored plant-based foods, like berries, coffee, tea, curcumin, etc., contain antioxidants that neutralize the free radicals that otherwise wreak havoc on cells. It's the same reaction as in your laundry. With laundry, we think of the oxygen as getting rid of the berry stain, and in our bodies, we think of the berries as getting rid of the free radical oxygen molecules.) Ethoxylated alcohol is a surfactant, which is needed to remove oils from items being cleaned, to make OxiClean an "all-purpose" cleaner and stain remover. OxiClean, however, does NOT contain enough surfactant to remove the oily body soils in a load of laundry. The powdered detergents I discussed in my post above (Tide, Gain, Persil) contain those exact same ingredients, PLUS add more to make the formula better for cleaning laundry. Think of them as OxiClean PLUS: - an oxygen bleach activator, to make the oxygen bleach work even if the wash temperature is not super hot - more surfactants, because oily body soils are a main component of dirty laundry - a hard-water builder system that's more effective than sodium carbonate - a polymer or emulsifier to keep the soils away from the fabrics once they've been pulled off by the surfactants - protease enzyme to break down protein-based stains like blood, grass, etc into small particles. The oxygen bleach can then break down those small particles much faster than it otherwise would. - optical brightener. All white and light-to-medium colored fabrics contain these, and refreshing them in the laundry makes the fabrics LOOK dramatically brighter and cleaner. - ingredients to stabilize the oxygen bleach so that it doesn't react with the moisture in the air while it's sitting on the shelf Those ingredients are like a cleaning orchestra, where the ingredients are more effective together than they would be separately. I do not think you will gain any cleaning power by adding liquid detergent. Everything you need for cleaning (mainly, the additional surfactants) is already in the powder detergent. And all the OxiClean ingredients are already in it too. To make these powder detergents work their best, use hot wash temperatures OR longer soak times. (Or both, if you have horrific stains.) The activator in Tide/Gain makes the oxygen bleach work better at lower wash temperature, 30-40 C (84-104 F). Above 40C/104F, the activator in Persil works equally well. So in general, Tide/Gain will clean better in American machines and for users who choose "warm" as the wash temperature to be more gentle to fabrics.