Product review (3 stars): Works but it's EXPENSIVE!!
We bought this when we lived in an apartment. We couldn't buy a water softener because we had no where to put one. Installation was fairly easy. The lid was a pain to get off but I managed. After our first load using this our dishes started to look better. After about 3 to 4 weeks they started to look like crap again. We changed the filter, which made a huge wet mess, and the dishes started coming out clean again. These things are way way way too expensive if you have to replace them every 3 to 4 weeks. That's at least $20/month! It would be much cheaper in the long term to buy a water softener. We bought new filters for a few months and it was breaking us, even with the discounts that are permanently offered. We started to ask friends and family about different solutions and one of our neighbors told us about Lemi Shine. It's a detergent you add to the dishwasher detergent. It's $3 to $5 for a bottle and lasts us a little more than a month. That's way better than $20! This stuff also works amazingly well! The interesting thing is we stopped using the filter and we forgot about it. When we moved out of our apartment and in to our first home we realized after we were settled in we left it connected to the sink in our apartment! Even though we have space for a water softener now we are still using Lemi Shine. Maybe I should go write a 5 star review on that item? :)