If it’s for a sauce or a soup, I started shaving my garlic in a twist shaver.
Moving from IMHO to Cafe Society.
This is what I have done for years.
I use my microwave to remove the skin from the cloves, 3 or 4 seconds and the little buggers pop right out with a squeeze, after that I just chop.
Owning a press is a pain in the ass.
I was going to say “cleaning a press is a pain in the ass” but even keeping it in your kitchen is a waste.
I use a press if I’m making something like guacamole and want it reduced as much as possible, or if I’m going to make a vindaloo and need ten cloves and just want to be lazy.
Otherwise, a chef’s knife makes short work of it.
I have not too long ago discovered fresh garlic, a totally different thing from dried ones. Just peel off the outermost layer and chop it up, bulb, blades and all.
I grate it. It’s easy, works well, and the grater is easy to clean; rinse it under the tap after use and wash it properly later.
Garlic from a jar isn’t real garlic, it’s just the sad decayed remains of something that was once garlic.
My current chef crush, Chef Ann Burrell, has this technique where she pushes her knife blade forward as she whacks the garlic, which sort of smears the garlic across the cutting board, breaking it down further than just a simple whack. Then just a few chops through et voila, minced garlic. It seems way more efficient than my straight-down whack and then chop, but I haven’t been cooking much lately to try to perfect her method. Anyway, thought I’d share.
An excellent use for dried garlic bulbs that have gotten old and started to sprout. Plant outside, water, then a while later: fresh garlic greens!
This. I saw them doing it on America’s Test Kitchen, and I’m sold. I have a microplaner which does treble-duty: it grates garlic, ginger and parmesan cheese. And the garlic and ginger are grated to a nice fine paste, which releases the most flavor of any method I’ve tried. After using it, a quick rinse under cold water gets most of the crud out, and then it can be washed easily in the dishwasher. I used it just last night for the garlic I added to my tomato/basil/garlic bruschetta topping.
I got one of these as a gift, and it works great: Amazon.com
I love this little guy for dicing garlic quick and easy (and it’s kinda fun to use). My chef bro-in-law gave it to me for Christmas. It’s called the Garlic Zoom.
http://www.amazon.com/Chefn-GZM-CDU12-Garlic-Zoom/dp/B000ZM7CV8
We have one that we use when we are using a lot of garlic for a recipe, or when the application is raw (like the ones mentioned above). It’s also helpful when we make seitan, because it needs to be particularly fine to mix into the paste well, but we’ve also used the microplane for that as well. If it’s just a couple of cloves and we’re already cutting up a lot of vegetables anyway, then I’ll just run a knife through it.
Disclaimer: I pay the roommate extra to do all the dishes, so that part doesn’t matter. 
I annihilate garlic presses (even solid metal ones); Eva uses one every so often, but I am banned.
Another garlic grater here. I use one of those flat little “flyswatter-type” graters for fine grating of small quantities of things like garlic, fresh ginger, lemon peel, Parmesan cheese, and so on.
Easy, fast, and washes clean easily, and the garlic comes out more uniform-textured and “smooshy” when grated than if I just mince it with a knife.