Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Did my first test drive with this today. Because of the learning curve, it took me a bit more time and effort to work through the steps properly as expected. First, i read thru the manual and highlighted items i had questions on and I made a few phone calls to the helpline yesterday Then I needed to make one more call today before canning, and the woman there called me back with a clarification I needed and that she didn't even know herself. This is so new we're all learning together. I believe that those who write 'user manuals' should not be let loose sometimes; bc if you leave certain tidbits out, it creates questions...that being said, here goes: The advantage to this unit over their autocanner is that it holds large capacity of jars (12) 8 oz jars, (8) pint jars and (7) quart jars. I have the Ball autocanner too, love that, but that unit holds 6, 4, and 3 jars respectively. You are more limited in recipes with the autocanner, altho' I have figured out to make almost anything in it, but I digress. In this watercanner, you can preserve anything at all, without question--home recipes or from whatever canning book you have. You turn it on and set a timer as usual. You let it rest 5 mins in the pot as usual. This also can be used on countertop to free up your rangetop to make potsful of what you're going to fill up the watercanner with. It should be near a sink so you are not lugging it too far to empty it out with the spigot. This unit is a multicooker, it steams and you can cook foods/soups in it, etc... This would make a good pot for lobsters or seafood boils. If you do not care to make larger quantities of preserves, you probably don't need this. I for one didn't NEED this either, but I don't play tennis or golf. This is MY hobby so I look at it that way. If you want to do just 3 or 4 jelly jars, or 2 or 3 pint jars in this, you certainly can do fewer jars and not just the entire full capacity. In using this unit for canning, you only use the part of the dial where the green is and ignore anything else. You basically dial it all the way to the right, point the dial to "canning" to preheat jars (one piece of info the manual left out) and to preserve. You can also use 4 oz jars and 12 oz jars (the manual didn't mention that either)...so any size jar that fits with space around each one for heat circulation and a 1 to 2 inch water level above it, just like stovetop preserving, is good....you do NOT have to preheat lids or rims (also not mentioned in manual). I made 6 pints of carrots today, 3 jars with spears, made spicy, and 3 jars of carrot 'coins' with dill seasoning. Each jar sealed and popped almost immediately upon removing them from the pot. You can use your own jar rack in this, but they say it must be set on top of the one included though. I will do that as mine has circular 'grooves' to hold the bottom of jars more securely in place than the one included. So basically, today I made 2 small batches, 3 pints each, of 2 different carrot recipes. I deliberately made the batches small so I could practice twice with it. You can reuse the water with each new round of canning you do, one after the other; so no need to dump water out and waste it. This sells for $150, but I bought this on sale at Cooking.com at about 15% off, no shipping; so you might want to wait for their sale or for Amazon's price to come down a bit. I will write more as I experiment more.