• Good hot coffee once I learned how to work with it.
  
• Good thermal carafe
  
• Nice aesthetics
  
• Reliable, decent build quality
  
• Electronics adequately shielded from overflows
  
• Relatively quiet
  
• Good support from Capresso

• Overflows under some circumstances, particularly with the included gold-tone filter

I am primarily a fan of manual drip makers (Chemex, Melitta) but I find that with some dedicated R&D some electric machines can make very good coffee. My Capresso MT 500 makes very good hot coffee at this point, but it did take a while for me to get used to it.

My abiding problem with this unit has been (until recently) overflow. I like coffee strong, and in order to make it properly (for me) I have to use quite a lot of coffee in the filter cone. For at least a year I used the included gold-tone filter, then a SwissGold filter. I was perpetually in danger of catastrophic overflows due to the rather slow rate at which the water would flow through the grounds and filter.

Lightbulb moment: one day, in an idle moment, I actually read through the instructions. I was very interested to see a section on filters, particularly the part that stated that paper filters were significantly faster than metal ones. I immediately experimented with a paper filter and was very happy to see that I was now able to make adequately strong coffee without danger of overflow.

One other positive point: Capresso's support. My machine recently became cranky, coffee didn't taste right, and I was on the verge of replacing it. I called Capresso, and they had me ship the machine back to them for service (out of warranty) for a flat fee of $35.00, including shipping (!) My machine came back in such great shape (and functioning so well) that it was almost impossible to tell if it was the same one I had sent in. I was VERY impressed with the quality of their support!

Buying experience was a simple and painless online experience.