39 varities of junk is still junk

[jducoeur]

In preparation for our office move, the folks who supply our water filtration system, who would *desperately* like us to buy coffee from them as well, have given us a week or so free with their top of the line Goofy Coffee Machine.

On the one hand, it's quite the impressive gadget. Any coffee maker that not only has menus on an LCD screen, but has multiple *levels* of menus, definitely qualifies as a toy. They supplied us with a couple dozen varieties of things to put into it, including mixins like Milky Way and Dove Bar, to ensure that one associates this thing with indulgent sins. (Of course, it loses gadget points by requiring you to do work -- you navigate the menus to select what you want, and then it pops open the door and tells you which packets to put in. And really, I would probably say that putting the words "coffeemaker" and "on-screen menus" in the same sentence qualifies as Wrong.)

OTOH, it's pretty horrifying from an ecological POV, managing to require one or more big plastic-and-foil pouches per 6 oz cup. Fortunately, this isn't an issue, because it's all pretty terrible: the coffee manages to be both weak and bitter, and the tea is watery and uninteresting. So I suspect we will go back to our Plain Old Coffee from our Plain Old Coffeemaker after the move...

Comments

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Our office tried that one, too. I liked the blueberry tea, and sometimes it was fun to make candy coffee, but we too decided not to go with it. I believe it was for price reasons, though.

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

Send it back with a note: "Thank you, but regulations require us to have an ADA-compliant office, and a blind person can't use this."

Just to see what they come up with. ;)

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

See, to be worth your time, the flavors should be loaded in little hoppers. The coffeemaker should be able to connect to the office network either by wire or wirelessly.

When you point your web-browser at it, you are presented with a menu. You quickly select the options you desire (or, with name and password support, you simply select from your favorites!) and press "Brew". The coffee machine begins work, and you get an IM when your coffee is ready. You get up, walk over, and put the mug underneath the spout, then press the button.

The admin menu gives you access to the available stock levels, statistics on what flavors are most desirable and which ones you can leave off your next order, and tells you who is spending their whole day drinking coffee instead of working.

These people need to get with the 21st Century.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Although the first generation would work only with IE, send IMs only via AIM, and send you coffee-flavored IM spam unless you went to the manufacturer's Website to opt out.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Yes... many office dwellers wind up very proud of their High Tech Coffee System, which often has an otherworldly blue glow as well as overly complex menus. But you can't make a decent cup of coffee in 13 seconds. The tea you can make in 13 seconds is... charitably described as still technically tea. Strangely coffee-flavored barely-tea substance, at that. Not so strangely when you consider that all those exciting different flavors of coffee they boast of get shot through the same nozzle, which is rarely if ever cleaned.

The k-cup machines lost all illusion of technical prowess for me when I found out that they don't, as I had supposed, nest the cups, or compress them magically away, but merely toss them haphazardly in a small bin which needs to be emptied every 12th cup.

And they break every 10 days. But we keep buying them and repair them even in times of economic peril, because everyone just expects a good office to have one.

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

I actually like the K-cup machines, for brewing tea. I wouldn't know how their coffee is, but it's the first machine I've encountered that brews a drinkable cup of tea. And there's a refillable, non-disposable K-cup available, though it's pretty expensive and, IIRC, made by a 3rd party, so the K-cup people don't get credit for it.

Not attractive enough for me to buy one, but I do think they're better than the average office joe-dispenser.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the Flavia machine we have. And, surprisingly, some people like the brown beverages it dispenses. I've been trying to find an upside to the thing, but gadgetry for gadgetry's sake isn't it: I'm not going to make a beverage and then throw it out just for the experience, and I'm not going to drink it either. It seems a half-thought-out idea gone terribly wrong.

[jducoeur]

Sounds like the Flavia machine we have.

*Ding*! Got it in one.

(At least, I assume it's the same machine -- definitely the right brand...)

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

We had one of those -- I think ours was Flavia like the other person who commented. We dumped it as part of our office cutbacks.

I believe that the engineering people brought in their own coffeepot and started making good coffee as a result, but the 'executive' half of the office used the machine without complaints.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Another fine product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation!