Re: the Keurigs that quit working. A friend of mine received one as a gift and it quit working within a few months. She called the 800 number, explained the situation (no receipt, etc) and Keurig sent them a brand new replacment. Worth a try if you have one that gives up the ghost.
As noted by Cat Whisperer, electric kettles are pretty standard in Canada too. At least in tea-drinking households.
There are non-tea drinking households in Canada? I know we love our coffee (see: Tim Horton’s), but we do like a spot of tea, too. 
Wow, this is the first I ever heard of kettles not being a pretty much universal appliance - its about the most basic and common item in the kitchen, well, at least in the UK.
As for the coffee thing, the problem is that boiling water is just fine for tea, but no use for instant coffee as it will overheat it making it bitter. Try putting your milk in first before adding your hot water from the kettle.
Why does microwave boiled water make for rubbish tea? It’s all to do with flavanoids (for want of a better word) You need well oxygenated water to make a good cup of tea and in a microwave this all just floats out, and since there is no pouring action, there is not enough disturbance to replace it.
I might add that to make a good cuppa tea it does help to make an extremely long drop to pour the water on to the tea - of course this is not all that practical due to spillage. I tried an experiment, I used a large cafetiere - stood it on the floor with my leaf tea in it and poured from the kettle at shoulder height, I managed to get enough hot water into it to brew my tea - yes it was strikingly better flavoured - but due to the splashes I doubt I would recommend it - unless you wish to put on heat proof leggings every time you make a cup of tea.
I think all dopers should try this experiment in the time honoured fashion using a control cuppa and a high poured cuppa.
Thanks for the advice. I called them and they offered me a big discount (about 1/3 off) on a replacement. This after having it 2 years and 4 months.
Seeing as that same model was all I could find with the features i wanted anyway, I decided to go for it.
So, new Keurig and a new electric kettle. Not bad.
Okay, I am sold on this new fangled idea of a kitchen kettle. I drink drip coffee by manually pouring hot water over ground coffee with a paper filter holder. The electric water kettle sounds easier than heating a pot of water on the stove. I searched Amazon and came up with a bazillion different ones. Could you help me by suggesting a brand? Thank you.
They aren’t complicated. I found a Rival brand at Walmart for $12 and I’ve been using pretty much daily for the last year with no problems. Brings a liter of water to boil in about four minutes and then turns itself off.
It’s funny what turns people from lurkers to posters and for me it was this thread :). I had no idea there were places in the world where not every house, workplace, and hotel or motel room has a kettle in almost constant use.
An electric kettle is not ‘surprisingly useful’ here, it’s an absolute essential! Small cultural differences like this really amaze me and make me wonder what else is different but doesn’t get mentioned because we assume the way it’s done where we are is the way it’s done everywhere.
As a european, I would say praising a simple electric kettle is like praising the choice of electing for modern surgery over that in vogue during the War Between the States.
It’s so basic you don’t think about it: I can’t remember when I last saw a stove kettle in use.
Taking your shoes off in the house? 
Any brand you recognize will do. Get a plastic one with a “cordless” base (almost all are cordless these days).
What’s funny is my parents never had an electric kettle but they would leave a kettle of water simmering on the stove all day long. What made it odd was that they were otherwise extremely frugal having grown up during the great depression. My mother would save cans, grease, clip coupons, recycle & repurpose everything, etc. and my father was always dialing down the thermostat to the (oil) furnace and complaining about lights being left on in empty rooms. Yet that pot of water on the stove would be at just below boiling all day long so they could have their instant coffee at the drop of a hat.
This Proctor Silex1 Liter model has been going daily w/o a hiccup for a little over 3 years, in all kinds of water and made it through an Afghanistan deployment like a champ. Where Tripler goes for more than a week, kettle goes. I missed it when he was deployed so we’re going to get a second one here soon.
It’s been used for drinks, near-instant hot cereal, added to already cooking food when water’s needed so the temperature doesn’t drop, for cleaning - anything you need boiled water for. We rinse it w/ vinegar frequently as Utah has some very hard water; then we add the vinegar to a laundry wash or dishwasher cycle.
The kettle is easier and faster. I never make a full pot and so the two or so cups I’m heating up start boiling in about a minute. And the handle isn’t hot so it’s no trouble pouring it (yeah, I’m a wimp).
I was making a lot of soup with mine for a while. Just pour the hot water over the instant broth, add the other ingredients and let sit for a couple of minutes.
I have several friends that just can’t believe most Americans don’t have one in their kitchens. My local friends all have one, we pass it around when foreign company comes.
instead of an electric pot you could buy an induction burner. It would be more versatile and give good heat control but also be more expensive.
I do like the idea of a kettle in the bedroom. I hate tromping down to the kitchen for a cup of tea at night.
/delurk
I prefer metal. Plastic seems to give a plasticy taste to the water after a while.
/lurk
And for the paranoid (such as those of us with cancer survivors in the family) there’s no telling when we’ll discover some new and exciting chemical that leaches out of previously thought “safe” plastics when you boil stuff in it. We upgraded our old plastic electric kettle to a stainless one for this reason. It’s either paranoia or playing it safe depending on your point of view. The new kettle sure is nice though - heats water to any of 6 pre-programmed temperatures.
And yes, seconding (thirding? fourthing?) the “forget instant coffee, just get a french press” suggestion. Instant coffee is fine as a baking ingredient, but that’s about it. (Though the Starbucks stuff isn’t terrible - I had a sample when they introduced it and were having a ‘can you tell which is which’ challenge. I could tell, but it wasn’t drastic.)
If you don’t drink tea, and you have a coffee maker or you don’t drink coffee either, then a kettle is not especially important.
That said, my wife has this Chef’s Choice model and it has held up to daily use for about 10 years now. No descaling required, either.
I wonder if it’s partly that cold drinks (like soda and iced tea) have some of the place in American culture that hot drinks (like hot tea) have in other countries. I wonder how many UK kitchens have an ice maker?