Bought a juicer a couple of days ago and thought I'd share what I got - if for no other reason than to follow up (in case anyone actually did find any value to this thread, and to see the thread through to completion ( a trait I've learned many women find very desirable!
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So after reading about many juicers and their respective features & benefits as well as their pros & cons, perhaps the most relevant thing of all is that there are 2 types of juicers out there:
1. There are those which are designed and built to process pretty much every vegetable out there by extracting as much liquid as possible while removing nearly all the fibrous pulp. They allow the consumer to create their own custom-created juices which are very high in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc. The prices and the customer satisfaction ratings of these juicers are far and wide - and from what I learned in a very short time, purchasing one of these types of juicers and becoming a "juicer" (that's what this band of celery-munching, hoity-toity goofballs refer to themselves as...) will alter your state of consciousness turning you into a weird, overly critical, slightly orange-tinted cynic about every kind of non-juice-based food on the planet.
Then there are those in group 2.
2. Citrus juicers. Specifically designed to ream out everything but the rind of the citrus and separating as much or as little of the pulp and fibrous materials from the juice. Most of these process half of a piece of fruit at a time and are fairly quick to process the product. And while a few of the juicers in group 1 are setup to extract the juice from citrus fruit (although none of them scored very high at this endeavor), none of the citrus-specific juicers have the ability to extract the juice from any other type of fruit or vegetable - which makes these juicers far less.
Once I learned the difference between the categories, I focused only on the citrus juicers and was quickly able to choose one which met my needs.
Black & Decker Handy Juicer
http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng ... ndy+Juicer
Holds 32 oz. of juice and allows you to adjust the pulp content from all of it to none of it. It's not the most powerful thing I've ever used in the kitchen but for what it's designed for, it's ample. Very few parts and all of it - including the motorized base - goes right in the dishwasher. For $18.86 it's adequate.
One side note - I don't recommend squeezing pre-chilled oranges. The juicer struggled to tear through the oranges which I had chilled in the fridge overnight so that the juice would already be cold. Room temp. fruit was quick and didn't strain the motor at all.
