Agreed -- vac pots produce the cleanest and most consistent coffee.
If you can't afford the Cona, the Bodum Santos is almost as good, though Bodum can't seem to make up their mind about whether or not they want to keep making the model. It's still available from some places, though (try http://greenbeanery.ca/ if you're in Canada). Don't be fooled by the electric version, it's far inferior (made of plastic, harder to clean, etc).
As a cheap and very effective upgrade, which puts the Santos on an equal footing with the Cona IMO, I purchased an antique glass Cory filter rod on eBay to use instead of the plastic filter that comes with the Bodum Santos. Now my coffee never comes in contact with plastic or metal during brewing. Yum!
As for the beans themselves, go for some Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Many people call it the best coffee in the world, and I tend to agree!
FTFA:
For every album released in a given year, a marketing strategy was developed to make that album stand out among the other releases that hit the market that year. Art must be designed for the CD box, and promotional materials (posters, store displays and music videos) developed and produced. For many artists, a costly concert tour is essential to promote their recordings.
The last time I checked, the purpose of marketing was (in essence) to convince people to spend money purchasing your product. It's a cost of doing business.
This begs the question: why should I be charged extra so you can recoup the money you spent convincing me to buy the CD?
Sure, you'll pay for the marketing with the profits from the CD anyway, but to use it as justification for charging more? This does not compute!
As a (weak) analogy, consider the following scenario... You see a poster for a new flavour of Chicken McNuggets and think "that looks tasty, I should go try some." You walk into your nearest McDonalds and order. When it comes time to pay, you hand out the listed $1.99, only to be told "That'll be $2.19 please!" You ask about the disparity between the prices, to which the reply is: "Why, sir! Those posters don't pay for themselves!"
I feel compelled to share a fairly old link to BrightSide (http://brightsidetech.com/). They manufacture High Dynamic Range (HDR) TVs (and other related stuff), so here's the display
medium.
Only really relevant if you have a lot of cash to spend, but it'll be interesting to see how long it will take for the big vendors to catch on and make this technology mainstream...
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed -- vac pots produce the cleanest and most consistent coffee. If you can't afford the Cona, the Bodum Santos is almost as good, though Bodum can't seem to make up their mind about whether or not they want to keep making the model. It's still available from some places, though (try http://greenbeanery.ca/ if you're in Canada). Don't be fooled by the electric version, it's far inferior (made of plastic, harder to clean, etc). As a cheap and very effective upgrade, which puts the Santos on an equal footing with the Cona IMO, I purchased an antique glass Cory filter rod on eBay to use instead of the plastic filter that comes with the Bodum Santos. Now my coffee never comes in contact with plastic or metal during brewing. Yum! As for the beans themselves, go for some Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Many people call it the best coffee in the world, and I tend to agree!
The last time I checked, the purpose of marketing was (in essence) to convince people to spend money purchasing your product. It's a cost of doing business.
This begs the question: why should I be charged extra so you can recoup the money you spent convincing me to buy the CD?
Sure, you'll pay for the marketing with the profits from the CD anyway, but to use it as justification for charging more? This does not compute!
As a (weak) analogy, consider the following scenario... You see a poster for a new flavour of Chicken McNuggets and think "that looks tasty, I should go try some." You walk into your nearest McDonalds and order. When it comes time to pay, you hand out the listed $1.99, only to be told "That'll be $2.19 please!" You ask about the disparity between the prices, to which the reply is: "Why, sir! Those posters don't pay for themselves!"
Nice try, RIAA.
or... wait for a better display medium
I feel compelled to share a fairly old link to BrightSide (http://brightsidetech.com/). They manufacture High Dynamic Range (HDR) TVs (and other related stuff), so here's the display medium.
Only really relevant if you have a lot of cash to spend, but it'll be interesting to see how long it will take for the big vendors to catch on and make this technology mainstream...