Yes! Still using a huge separate grinder

I'm also using hard cups

Bluecold wrote:<image>
With the newest AEG Caffe Grande Macchiato CG 6600 you can make up to ten cups of espresso in a row in the handy thermal carafe.

I can see the ads already:

Seems like a good idea for that morning cuppa, some days my brain seems like it would like at least 10 doubles for that morning kick start. ^^

Theodore wrote:Did you ask them, if the ball is harmfull?

I didn't ask them if it was harmful since it's plastic and I already have enough of that in my daily diet as it is.

On a serious note, I think over the coarse of about 1000 years that little ball might deteriorate to the point of oblivion, but in the meantime it's going to continue to play jokes on me by playing hide-in-seek.... those Cimbalis, always playing jokes on their owners!

timo888 wrote:Yes, but that is not a show-stopper, IMO. The interest to me is not that the technology cannot defeat the zero-sum nature of thermodynamics; rather it is the fact that the RAW MATERIAL for the finished product is so readily obtainable. Electricity to power the radio-wave-generator can be produced with water and coal and wind and trash and in the not too distant future, with organic-waste-eating bacteria. If we can produce a fuel to power vehicles and that fuel does not start out as light sweet crude, and the process is less costly than the process for refining gasoline, including the hidden costs such as the monetary and intangible costs of militaristic interventions to secure a supply of the raw material, then we have made progress.

Please note that his radio waves does not make a saline solution burnable forever, just in the presence of said waves, which makes the technology rather limited (because a wave generator that can crack the bond between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms is going to be rather bulky). It also has to be rather efficient, otherwise you could just split the water using old fashioned electrolysis, which is simpler, safer and easier to do (no complicated technology, just add electricity to water). A saline solution is also quite much harder to store than distilled water since it's quite corrosive to most metals. And then there's the big problem with burning hydrogen, since it has a tendency to dilute metals making them really brittle, esp. steel alloys. This reduces the possibilities even further since a normal Otto engine could not run on hydrogen for more than maybe a couple hundred hours before the piston liners begin to crack. One solution would be to fashion everything from the holding tank to the combustion chamber in titanium, or at least line it with titanium, but that would get costly, and fast (my father used to work for a company that made marine diesel engines, and their coolant systems where made out of titanium).

New technology is always interesting and to benefit for mankind, but one shouldn't think that every new little thing is going to solve a worldwide problem.

Elektra owners will especially enjoy the online game Taste Invaders.

Oh the humanity.
Somebody tries to scam coffee machine collectors with this:




Which is the stupidest thing ever. Everybody who would want one, can see it's a fake.
The sad reality is that people have placed bids on it.

Thanks HB for adding pics!

Ehm, that is not a fake, it is simply a decoration. And for 21,5 Euro, I'd buy it if they'd ship it! It's supposed to add a touch of class, and ambience to today's (with notable exceptions) square, computer and robot made espresso machines. My French is a bit rusty, but if I'm not mistaken, that's exactly what it says in the auction.
Lotsa machines have this as an option.

No, it _is_ a fake. Cimbali never made such a thing. The text is put there just to prohibit refunds and those auctions rely on people not reading. Remember the infamous PSP box? It's probably a silly scam.
And it doesn't add class to your house. The person who bought it would be laughed at when he explains his guests who ask for coffee that the thing doesn't do much of anything.

@below me, yes it is a scam, because it says cimbali, while cimbali obviously has nothing to do with it.

It's NOT a scam. It's sold as the decoration it is!

This Cimbali is a coffee machine, decoration, and musical instrument...