Re the wood rot on the top drawer panel:

The hot moist air escaping from the top drawer at the end of the cycle when the drawer cover opened condensed when it hit the cold granite counter and settled on the top edge of the wood panel.

On the advice of dadoes, locking the drawer when I started the cycle ended the problem. The cover stays on the drawer until it is unlocked. When I'm ready to empty the drawer I unlock it, the cover releases and I open the drawer immediately. Sometimes the air is cooled by then and a non-issue. Sometimes it's still hot/wet but opening the drawer keeps it from condensing on the wood edge. My wood panels are pristine.

My unit is about 9 years old. They may have addressed the issue in newer models. So wood panels are still an option if that is what you prefer.

Thank you for taking the time to share this, makes a lot of sense!

CalCal ... do you know how to lock a drawer? Press and hold the Lock button until it beeps THREE times ... it beeps once immediately upon being pressed (of course), then again a few seconds later (that's Child Lock mode, locks the buttons but not the drawer), then a third time a few more seconds later (that's Drawer Lock, the lid stays closed when the cycle ends until Lock is pressed again to release it).

Wow, thank you Dadoes! I haven't been doing that all these years. btw your user name looks very familiar to me and I think I was following advice from you 11+ years ago when I was purchasing a new house full of appliances. If you were active on the forum back then, thanks I'm happy with all purchases. Does the FP Tall with stainless steel front sound like a good idea to replace my old integrated normal size double?

Cal cal...

I like my FP tall SS dish drawers quite a lot.

What I do have to be careful with is my plates. My Corelle plates will fit in the top and bottom drawers. But my Crate and Barrell plates will only fit in my top drawer. Not a big deal as I often tend to run my top drawer twice a day and my bottom drawer every other day.

I definitely would purchase these again.

On my older DD603 I enabled the extended dry option, instead of the regular 25 min drying phase the lid remains locked and the drying fan continues to run for 2 hours to eliminate the excess moisture, which you can cancel any time you want. I also think I learned this from a DADOES post, thank you Dadoes. I would hope and expect that option still exists in the new DishDrawers. As well, the new dish racks and cutlery baskets are very nice, they have many more convenience options to adjust to your loads. The bottom drawer remains the same size as previous machines.

The tall-tub units should add some loading flexibility ... AND the newer models have better racking anyway. The side shelves are on rails for height adjustment, and the divider tines in the rack can be folded down.

Extended dry function is no longer available far as I'm aware. As I recall, it was only on the 603 series, and not on all of them.

Locking the drawer serves similarly, just that the blower does shut off after 30 mins. As an alternative, diagnostic mode could be used after the cycle ends to reclose the lid and turn the blower back on for as long as desired ... but a lot of button-pushing is involved, LOL.