I hate the taste of coffee and I can't make a decent cup to save my life; however when you have dinner guests you can bet a couple are coffee drinkers.  I decided to buy this Dec 06 with my fingers crossed (after reading umpteen reviews on various sites) in preparation for a girls' night out dinner party of six.   I wanted to make a variety of relatively good hot drinks quickly and conveniently so speed was of the essence as we were all off to The Nutcracker ballet immediately following dinner.   Although only 2 tried the decaf , they were very impressed with the flavour.  The tea-drinkers  were very happy with the Earl Grey tea.  I'm a heavy loose tea drinker and I was quite happy with the quality of the Earl Grey as well.  The Suchard chocolate is wimpish.  To summarize the cons:  it's surprisingly noisy but only for a short period; mine dribbled a minute amount of  water (apparently expected) but that was conveniently caught in the tray.  With teacups, it sprayed a bit on the sides.  Wiser to use slim mugs. Mine kept switching to manual until I realized I was holding down the auto button too long; after that it was fine.  Pros:  Produced fast, decently hot, good decaf coffee and tea and OK hot chocolate.  Very easy to clean and a nice compact shape.  Water reservoir good size and easy to fill.  Easy to operate.  Yep, the T-pods are a tad expensive but it was worth it for speed alone and they do keep a long time.  The only problem is finding the T-pods!  I bought the machine at Canadian Tire for 149.00 not incl tx (but no pods), saw it in specialty stores (no pods), then spotted the machine ($10 cheaper) and the pods in one of Loblaws' monster stores so phone around to save yourself search time or buy on-line.  I would like to see more variety of tea-pods like they have in Europe.  Anyway, I recommend it for people like me, but probably not for picky java addicts - let them buy the more pricey machines. Now I just have to find some cappucino-espresso drinkers and get their opinion!  Hope this helps you.