Seriously: at least if you buy a good machine, all this stuff should be and usually is covered in the manual. It tells you how to avoid mold (do a machine clean

Seriously: at least if you buy a good machine, all this stuff should be and usually is covered in the manual. It tells you how to avoid mold (do a machine clean every month, for instance, there's even a dedicated button for this), if and when you should maybe rinse the dishes before putting them into the machine (usually not, because the machine does a pre-rinse and has a sensor to detect the degree of dirt in the water, but stuff like egg yolk you should rather rinse because once it is dried, it's just hard to get off), and so on. Same for laundry: a good manual will actually describe what each program does, and in what way you can modify it. Yes, back in the day the machine would simply heat the water >60 degrees celcius and just heat the machine to oblivion to dry the dishes. Yes, that kills mold, but it's also stupid. At least here on HN, I would think that people would agree that doing things smarter is a good thing. Yes, it involves a little bit more work on your side, but at least here in Germany, where I pay 35ct per kWh, it actually saves real money. So I stand by it: don't cheap out on these machines, and RTFM.