For those of you that like preparing and drinking coffee, what do you use - a simple coffee filter where you just place the water/coffee/paper filters or one of those fancy new filters with digital displays that you can set to have the coffee ready in the morning once you wake up? I'm using none and prepare my coffee the oldschool way, boil water in some container then add the coffee and boil a little more.
I've never heard of a coffee *filter* which comes with a timer built into it, but I have seen and purchased coffee *makers* that do this. I tried pre-programming the machines to brew my coffee in the morning, but honestly the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Plus, I did not like the idea of leaving that ground coffee in the machine all night with water in it. I was worried mold may start forming inside the machine, which would not be good at all. There were many times at work when my coworkers would get lazy and not clean out the coffee pots and the coffee grinds and leave them overnight, and when I would come in in the morning, there would be damp coffee grinds with mold growing on them. Personally, I like to make my coffee in an electric percolator. It produces super rich coffee, is no fuss to use and it's easy to keep clean.
Either type of machine will get the job done. What is your budget? Do you like tinkering with gadgets? Honestly both of those machines use the same process/filters so there's not a lot of difference. If you want to try something new you could get a chemex or French press. Another tip: boiling water temps actually give you more bitter coffee. Let your water boil and give it a couple of minutes to cool down a bit, then add your grinds
Ouch, my English fails me sometimes, especially when I'm translating verbatim from my native language - thanks for the clarification Tom! I asked this because recently the coffee maker of a good friend of mine broke once again in the same way - the digital display stopped working rendering the maker useless. Maybe he should stop buying that brand, it's the second one that breaks.
At home I have a Dolce Gusto machine from Nestle which gets coffee done with no filters, but you can't time the preparation of the coffee, you still need to insert the cup and press the button. However at work we use the simplest coffee maker and filter possible and the coffee is delicious! I just don't like preparing the coffee myself because I never get the measurements right, but for me when it comes to quality of the coffee it's great.