One nice alternative if you want but can't have an instant hot is an electric kettle---we got one a few months before our remodel, and have been using it for all sorts of things. It boils far faster than our kettle did on the gas stove, and I also love the auto shutoff. No more trying to remember if I turned the stove off after I'm at work! It will have its own space in the new kitchen, and will be the primary source for hot water. We are also in the extreme minority in GW land and only have one water source in the kitchen---not even a fridge line! (Okay, technically it's split for the d/w, so I guess that's 1.5...) It's what we had before and we liked it, so we kept it that way. Works for us. I like the idea of an instant hot, but we have a small kitchen and the under-sink real estate was too valuable to put one in. I contemplated a pot filler, but our stove is close enough to the sink that we wouldn't gain that much. Friends who have one that is very close to the sink still love it because it allows them to fill pots with a child in one arm. You still have to put the child down to empty it, of course, but makes it a little easier! We have a hot water dispenser at work, which I do use, but I do find the water is not quite hot enough for tea. I use it anyway for that since I'm lazy, though. :) (You also may be able to change the settings; no clue how it works, exactly.) I've seen steamers (someone around here who posted a finished kitchen recently has one, I think) and they're very cool, but really only logical to have if you steam things virtually every night or if you have a really large kitchen with space that isn't needed for other things.

We have an Instahot. We had the cheapest kind of insinkerator instahot in our old kitchen and it worked for many many years. We had one in our previous house too and my DH installed one for his parents. In our experience, there haven't been any problems with them. Perhaps there are more problems where the water is very hard. They are pretty simple devices. For the new kitchen we got a nicer looking instahot which also provides filtered cool water. The nicer one has a temperature adjustment which lets it be set just short of boiling. We use it a lot and I wouldn't want to be without it. I use it to: start a pot of boiling water off closer to the boil so I don't have to wait as long - or especially when I need to add a cup or so of water to a pot that is already going so it doesn't cool off and need to heat again. make tea - if I'm really in a fussy mood and want the most perfect brew for black tea, I'll put it in the microwave to get it to a full boil, but really the tea brews fine in it. use it mixed with tap water for washing so that I don't have to wait for the hot water to get to the tap. run fresh herbs under it to release some of the flavor. warming our granddaughter's bottles or frozen baby food when she was at that stage - just put the bottle in a mug and put hot water in. It is very fast and one doesn't have to worry about hot spots like with a microwave. use 1 part hot water to 3 or 4 parts cool filtered water for mixing with the yeast when making bread. Warm water without chlorine - chlorine inhibits the yeast growth. We don't have a soap dispenser at the main sink. I prefer to have soap that I can squirt where I need it and I don't mind having the bottle on the counter. If I did I would buy a prettier bottle. But we have a soap dispenser on our island sink. On the island, a soap bottle would get moved around, sometimes be in the way and sometimes be hard to find. The island one is used mainly for washing hands so I keep hand soap in it and just fetch the one from the main sink on occasions when I need dish soap there.

Curious not one negative review. There was an article recently on the amount of waste these machines have produced. So much the inventor sold the patten in embarrassment. I think I would have continued to resist had I read that article a year ago. I was the last of my siblings to give it a go. I did not want the cup storage to take up space on my limited cupboards so I opted for a drawer to set my Kureg on. BIG MISTAKE. It never occurred to me I would be lucky to fit JUST the machine under the uppers!! Mine slides forward w/o a plant mover. I just give'er a tug. Anyone know how long they last? I can't say mine fulfilled all my coffee dreams so will not replace it once it breaks. The cost per cup is very prohibitive and I am not finding the quality of the coffee "worth" it for me. I drink 1-3 cups each morning. I could dump a lot of coffee and come out ahead I have decided. I tried all the fill them yourself cups,etc. and found the coffee very lacking. Why did the coffee from my sister's Kureg taste sooooooo good but mine is so so?

jae_tn2, sorry, I should have been more specific...I didn't find him but did find that first name, so it's not a made up name like I surmised, and also the last name but not together. The one that comes up most often is Clodosbaldo Russian looking like possibly being some crime connections in Bolivia or Uraguay (but I don't read Spanish and google translate wouldn't work). Not that I thought it was your guy, just that the name is an actual name.