After much research and many read reviews I thought this might be what I was looking for. However there are definitely a few flaws with the overall design. first I thought the water was only touching glass, but it turns out theres a heating element made of aluminum (I assume) that heats the water at the bottom of the device, however I theorize (much like using a glass coffee maker one would use on the stove) that a thicker amount of glass would be an all glass solution(because if its too thin heat will crack the glass) and an all glass situation is truly superior but hard to find, as its non reactive, and there is no leeching of anything into the water, and if you purify your water ahead of time, it's basically the way it should be (however even here in san francisco, I discovered boiling regular tap water would leave strange rust like stains on the heating element where it heated the water, which was quite disturbing and lead to me buying the pur filter system for the faucet at walgreens for a cheap temporary solution) I understand the need for a plastic handle, but theres no real need to have a plastic lid thats touching the glass, couldn't you have a piece of plastic holding a piece of glass that then touches the water so that not even the droplets of steam water get plastic leeched in it and then it drops back in....a very silly design with an easy design fix to maximize effectiveness. I feel people are either doing things like this for planned obsolescence, or are just plain stupid. much the like the button that ended up breaking. I'm a pretty sensitive person, I'm not pushing down the button crazy hard (l'm not the one screwing up the wobbly doorknobs by yanking on them too hard in old houses, i try and use the least amount of energy for success, just saying in my defense, i'm a pretty zen guy, maybe it's all the tea I'm drinking, i mean, after all, its why I got this product) the button is also the ONLY way to open the lid, and if it breaks, you have to force the lid open, also when doing something like this, the automatic shut off thing no longer works because when its not fully closed (and when broken its nigh impossible to get it back to the fully closed position) it seems to not trip whatever mechanism is supposed to auto shut it off when it reaches its peak boil, like when theres too much steam, also this extremely hot steam is most likely leeching plastic from the lid stupidly. It is possible that some guest I've had over to my house might have pushed the button too hard foolishly when trying to help themselves to some tea, but a majority of the time it's just me using it. Really it's just an overly complex design where too many things can too easily go wrong, if anything, make a simpler more full proof button system, because now I have to wait around it or make sure I'm in the next room and can start to hear it roar to a slight boil, but if I don't pay attention, it could keep on boiling until all the water evaporates, again, a huge flaw, like leaving on an iron. Come on guys, we can definitely do better than this. Otherwise when the button was working, it was pretty sweet, and has a bit more cord length than you realize at first. I got it around APRIL 11 - APRIL 16 2013 and as of today, JULY 17, it's been broken for a few weeks, but seems to be getting worse, and can furth slip into the blast handle and get stuck, and pressing the button does nothing.
