You aren’t thinking nearly evil enough. If they do implement this they likely will include some small amount of flash memory and store the IDs of cups that were already “used” in that machine. So no refilling old cups, no taping an RFID tag on. Buy more like a consumer sheep, damn you !
Count me in as another fan of the Keurig. I usually drink only a single cup of coffee in the morning (any maybe one more in the afternoon on occasion), so the single serving at a time is right for me. The selection is a benefit, too; although I always drink the same thing, my wife and kids use it to make other types of drinks, including chai, black tea, and hot chocolate. And I’m lazy, so the lack of any clean-up is nice.
Having said all that, if there’s an option I should consider that has all of those benefits, I’d be happy to look into it.
I pick up a double latte on the way to work in the morning. pay $2.70 plus $1.00 tip. At work I sometimes have a Keurig, which is “free” because my company (me) supplies it. Even if it cost $0.40 or $0.80, it’s the cheapest thing I put in my mouth all day.
Ooooh, ooooh, think of it in these two ways:
Pot of coffee is to Keurig as Costco is to Safeway!
French press with expensive beans is to Keurig as Kobe beef burger with truffles and organic African mayo is to a homemade burger on the grill!
Meaning: some of us don’t need a gallon of coffee each day, nor do we want to use time and money for upscale coffee.
I like mine. It was my favorite wedding gift we got when we got married (and we got a TON of swag, one of the perks of having 250 guests 
) . I like it for the ease of making a cup at a time, being able to quickly switch between decaf and regular, and keeping everything clean.
The pods make an easy gift to ask for when I cant think of anything else, and they aren’t as expensive if you buy them in bulk from Costco. I also have the reusable pod as well for when I run out. Since I’m not a decaf drinker, I have a stock of decaf pods that I save for guests.
I think that says it all, really. If your goal in life is to have a house full of swags, especially swags that people gave you, then a swag that makes one cup of coffee at a time probably seems downright… utilitarian.
OMG, was that really necessary? LOL! A difference of 75 cents per day is not necessarily a reason upon which to base a decision.*
*Well, it would be to me this month, but by March probably not. . .
Four reasons I was hesitant:
[ul]
[li]I’d have had to stick with the varieties available to me[/li][li]The expense, as madmonk28 notes[/li][li]The proprietary issue, as NitroPress pointed out[/li][li]The envoronmental impact[/li][/ul]
The reuseable pods address all of those. So it’s faster than a French press and makes better coffee (IME) than a drip machine.
My other reason for hesitating was, if I use my own grounds, how does the coffee turn out? I couldn’t get a straight answer for that because the people with enough understanding to address the question generally said “it’s easy to use, therefore it makes terrible coffee.” In the end it was fine, and it’s even better in the mouth
Yeah, that’s a problem with them, not a problem with the concept.
To the scoffers who are bemused at people who drink “only a cup or two a day,” what is YOUR solution? Drink more coffee?
I’d LOVE to drink more coffee, but I’ve got PROBLEMS when I drink too much! I ration myself to two cups in the AM to get the caffeine greasing the brain gears, and I have an occasional cup of decaf in the evening. Under those circumstances, a Keurig is perfect.
When I had a drip brewer, I’d make a half pot (which can be 4-6 cups, depending on your brewer) and then I’d use a mongo cup and drink the whole damn thing. It wasn’t GOOD for me.
With the Keurig, I get two primo cups in the AM. I can have two entirely different roasts, or two different flavors, or two different brands. I get to fully enjoy what I drink, and it’s a small extravagance that really works out to be inexpensive in the long run.
~VOW
I too like to invent reasons why people do things and then look down on them for not having a better reason I invented.
If 16 oz is considered a cup, then I only drink two cups.
“That’s how they getcha!” muttered the sour-faced old man to no one in particular.
I wasn’t really sold on the concept either until my employers put one in the breakroom recently. Yeah, it’s way more expensive per pound for the coffee, but it’s convenient and nice to be able to get a fresh-brewed cup anytime instead of sketchy mud from a coffee urn made God-knows when. Still not sure I’d want one at home, but I can see the usefulness in some situations. And others must too, or nobody’d be buying the goddamned things.
The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is that anything that can make four cups of coffee can still make only one cup. You just use 1/4 the amount of water and grounds.
Yes, but the Keurig machine measures the amount of water out for you, and if your office gets the super-deluxe setup, it feeds directly into a water line instead of you having to fill it, and the grounds are pre-measured and contained in a little cup you just throw in the trash later.
The convenience level for an office or busy family is awesome. It’s just another modern convenience to make our lives easier - I mean, phones don’t need to have numbers stored in memory, you can just dial the number yourself, but it’s so convenient! Cars don’t need automatic transmissions when you have a gear shifter for manual transmissions either!
People seriously don’t understand why others would like something so easy and convenient?
For a restaurant that wants to offer 25 kinds of candy coffee, the high-end, plumbed-in model is no problem.
For an office where there are several different tastes in coffee and keeping pots of various kinds is too difficult and wasteful, the same high-efficiency design is a good solution.
For a household where there are probably four or five cheaper solutions that would make better coffee at a lower running cost, it’s a pretty stupid choice. But Costco sells them and it’s a brand name and it’s trendy and the little cup spinners look so cute on the counter… who cares that the maker is 5-10X more expensive than other options and the unit cost per mini-cup (…stops for a sip from his 12-ounce coffee mug…) is through the roof and you’re locked into buying commercially-made units (or screwing around with a mini-basket that’s a PITA to use)? It’s… it’s a KEURIG! Don’t you UNDERSTAND?
I assume that the overlap between household Keurigs and 5-bladed razor inserts is a very high percentage, and for all the same - ridiculous - reasons.
Yes, of course. NO ONE ever buys completely useless, overhyped, inconvenient, expensive products because massive marketing campaigns tell them to.
I think your issue goes well beyond the Keurig itself - and other than these global complaints, you have yet to really address wether or not the Keurig did the job it is marketed to do - or how well it might do that job as compared to other ways of making coffee.
Its fine if you think its a marketing ploy - but it serves a market - is incredibly popular and does what it is marketed to do.
I also get the destinct impression you’ve never used one to know how well it does or does not work or what the appeal is - you’ve shot it down based on it being a “marketing ploy for the sheeple”.
I personally try not to. But I don’t fault those that do; if not for all the slack-jawed automatons being led around by their noses, whom would the iconoclastic luminaries like you and I have to feel superior to?
Even if they are, what’s it to you?
I don’t own a keurig but I use one almost every day at work. It’s far simpler and easier than a regular drip machine and given how simple those guys are, I hope this gives you an idea of the ease of a keurig.
I just love how the internet forces people to these extreme positions. It’s gone from “I think these are good if you don’t drink a lot of coffee,” to “you are a tool of your capitalist overlords if you use one.”