The prospect of lubing my lever this weekend just undertook a whole 'nother meaning
I went to the hardware store last weekend and asked a guy there if they had "foodsafe lubricant," he gave me a real quizzical look and as I realized what might be going on in his head I quickly clarified that it was for my espresso machine.

Yes,... this post is adult one

shadowfax wrote:And I'm pretty sure that 97.845% of that 90% of all posts on teh 1ntarweb are complaints about how stupid everyone else is.

However 90% of the global web traffic bandwidth is "Adult", 9% mail spam and the rest of the world's internet traffic 1%. So from that we can deduce that not many people that use their brains when making decisions.

Marshall wrote:As the focus of hobbyist attention moves from $400 to $1,500+ espresso machines, I have observed a trend of posters to adopt the role of passionate defenders of their own machines, no matter what the actual subject matter of the thread happens to be. It sometimes degenerates to a "my machine beats your machine" level.

What is most amusing or annoying, depending on your point of view, is these people rarely have meaningful experience with competing machines, yet assume a posture of expertise about all machines based on second-hand technical data they have collected from the Web. I won't name names. You know who you are.

So, this is a plea to detach your egos from your beloved machines. An admiring comment about Machine A, does not mean the poster was trashing your beloved Machine B, and even if he was, he was not trashing you personally. So, let's grow up, people. Enough said.

I agree with you 100%, and this is something that annoys me something terribly, mostly when I find it in myself. It probably has something to do with the fact that if you buy something it has to be good, otherwise you would have made a bad purchase, which is bad for your ego (or streetcred.).

But on the other hand I've also seen something that is likewise annoying, and it's when reviewers that are used to very high end equipment review something that's quite cheap, and fail to see the greatness compared to price. Sure Thing A might only be half as good as Thing B, but if it costs just one tenth of Thing B, that makes it 5 times greater than Thing B, which is an aspect that's very important to buyers without deep pockets. I'm not saying that this stuff is often seen in the espresso-world, it's just something I've noticed as a trend in the review industry as a whole.

Stuggi wrote:But on the other hand I've also seen something that is likewise annoying, and it's when reviewers that are used to very high end equipment review something that's quite cheap, and fail to see the greatness compared to price. Sure Thing A might only be half as good as Thing B, but if it costs just one tenth of Thing B, that makes it 5 times greater than Thing B, which is an aspect that's very important to buyers without deep pockets.

Ignoring the artificial construct of your numbering system, Sebastian, this is something I think we have all noticed -- and (probably) all been guilty of to a certain degree. I know that my days with a $300 machine were not all that long ago, and I know that I was quite satisfied with my $300 machine . . . until I took the plunge. In other words, I largely agree with you.

That said, certainly not all "under $500" machines are equal, and some are better than others.

The numbering system was just a way to quantify greatness, impossible in reality but handy to illustrate my point. Also if one is just after the best espresso, value for money doesn't make much sense since you obviously want the best, which I think is why most reviewers ignore this aspect at a certain point. And when you're talking premium machine money, the performance vs. price becomes even less important because if something costing 2200 dollars is much better than something costing 1800 dollars, one might argue that the 400 dollar extra doesn't really matter since it's only 22% more money.

Marshall wrote:As the focus of hobbyist attention moves from $400 to $1,500+ espresso machines, I have observed a trend of posters to adopt the role of passionate defenders of their own machines, no matter what the actual subject matter of the thread happens to be. It sometimes degenerates to a "my machine beats your machine" level.

What is most amusing or annoying, depending on your point of view, is these people rarely have meaningful experience with competing machines, yet assume a posture of expertise about all machines based on second-hand technical data they have collected from the Web. I won't name names. You know who you are.

So, this is a plea to detach your egos from your beloved machines. An admiring comment about Machine A, does not mean the poster was trashing your beloved Machine B, and even if he was, he was not trashing you personally. So, let's grow up, people. Enough said.

I do agree that people are sometimes bias about their personal espresso machines, but I'm sure they're also dreaming about their next espresso machine purchase. I'm in disbelief about my first espresso machine, especially how I came across it and the deal I was able to get on it! I really wanted the Rancilio Silvia and ended up getting the Cimbali Jr instead. I recently acquired a Rancilio Silvia (used) from a coworker of mine and have "discovered" some of its unique nuances. My skills from the Cimbali has definitely helped me to go "backwards" to Lady Silvia, but the experience has also made me appreciate the Junior even more than before! I have an extreme bias towards my Cimbali, but also appreciate the fact that there are less costly choices that also produce an extremely good cup of espresso, cappuccino in my case. To be completely fair, the Rancilio steams smaller portions of milk better than my Cimbali, as my Junior loves to superheat the milk before I can get enough air into the mix. The Cimbali is faster in everything, better shots with little effort and the cleanup is SO much faster with the Cimbali!

I've rambled... but in short, we all kinda have a little bias towards our equipment. Like it was mentioned before, some of us think what we have kinda represents a piece of our personality, a taste in what we like... In retort, both of my machines were killer deals so it's not like I saved all of my pennies to buy what I have, maybe that represents the fact that I'm just lucky?! Being straight forward with what you like for specific reasons is what it's all about... the good and the bad is what we all like to hear! I'm sure it doesn't end with espresso equipment... your choice of water and beans is just another avenue to travel, buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

I think this is just mostly human nature. It's in our character to defend decisions, even if that's the only decision. This occurs in everything from televisions to vacuum cleaners.

For what it's worth, I actually see very little bias from folks on HB (or CG for that matter) when it comes to espresso machines. By and large, people are willing to offer critical opinions of their equipment or that of others.