OK, let's try this again.
Please don't make me go thru the intartubes searching for videos to post here.
There are *plenty* of videos of machines with a "food disposer" getting rid of a hamburger, which sounds pretty impressive until we find the videos of machines made in Germany, with "filters", getting rid of an entire cake.
There's not much to clean, if anything, in an Euro machine. The filtering system is basically self-cleaning and not much different from what Harley described above, and indeed, everyone seemed to be very happy with what Frigidaire offered in the 90's as a self-cleaning soft-food disposer machine.
The "advantage" of a "filter" machine is that everything is upfront and easy to take apart and rinse off when (or if) needed. If someone drops a plate of spaghetti inside the machine, it takes literally less than 2 minutes with "no stooping" (why is everyone so bent out of shape when they have to stoop, pun intended?) to pull it off, rinse everything off and be back in business.
I have had plenty of "disposer" machines that kept the spaghetti strands (or penne, or ziti, or fettuccine etc) there for over 3 cycles until I got fed up and crouched for over 5 minutes getting everything back in order. It was way more annoying. And, in my case, it wasn't even a child that did it, it was my housemate's idiot boyfriend who failed to scrape the plates as he should have. My friends, who had actual kids, all complained about the "disposer" being an annoyance and were fairly grateful to switch to the Euro-style "filter".
There isn't a good way to have a disposer and not fall prey to either the holes are too big (to let food thru) and then the machine is vulnerable to stuff like twist ties (which should never be there in the first place) or the hole is too small and one has to remove de food by hand from the grates when it happens, and that takes way longer than just rinsing a filter.
Same thing with the heater -- I have never had a problem with plastics melting in the lower rack, then again, maybe my family never had a machine with a heater that was too hot. On yet another hand, I've had a GE Profile dw for years and put my Tupperware/Rubbermaid on the lower rack (including lids) with *no* problems, and people here in another thread are complaining that whatever Tupperware they have can't have the lids in the dishwasher. And a friend of mine who also had a GE Profile nearly identical to mine (except it did not have Sensor Clean) would often complain that kids didn't load something correctly, it fell off from the rack and melted touching the heater. A problem I've *never* had.
Also, please recognize that manufacturers seldom have *your* best interests in mind. We and you are not their customers, the *investors* are, and they'll say *anything* to keep selling, whether it's true or not. There has been *plenty* of "you have to keep cleaning the filter" or "front-loaders leak" over the decades, and the incidence of "trouble" on both sides of both camps is nearly identical, it's all a matter of perception.
No one will say "sometimes you'll be crouching by the machine for over 5 minutes trying to remove food from the grates, and, under some circumstances, you'll need to take everything apart to remove the twist-tie(s)", nor will they say that some kinds of plastic won't dry well, they'll make mealy-mouthed noises to the tune of "use a rinse agent" *even* if the machine has an exposed heater and "heated dry".
All the machines I've had, since the 70's, would have dry stuff by the morning. All of them would have some piece of plastic that is *not* _perfectly_ dry at the very end of the cycle. In fact, I had machines with a heated dry (exposed element and all) and a fan (Maytag was one) that didn't dry nearly as well as the GE Profile that had the exposed element but no fan (just an "active" vent door). Neither of the previous machines I had dried any better than the two I had/have with "condensation" drying.
This conversation is just as ridiculous as the fight about manual vs. automatic transmission. My own dad (a professor of mechanical engineering, no less) kept fighting me about how a manual transmission was more efficient and never bothered to find out if there were anything more modern/better than the old 2- or 3-speed hydraulic torque converter transmissions, until I was on my second car with an electronic 5- or 6-speed transmission. He had to stay with us for 10 days or so and realize we had cars with way more power than his cars and used *less* gas than he did to convince himself it was not the "automatic" part that was a problem, but the design and, on top of it, that he, as the user, did not and could not switch gears as often or as fast as the newer automatic transmissions. He is now on his third or fourth car with an automatic and claims there's no way he will go back to a manual.
I'd like to also say I'm sorry if I keep hitting on the same key all the time. I am usually fine (and used to) just letting things go when I realize I'm talking to people who don't know better, because appliances are not the thing they pay attention to or try to learn about, it's just a "robot" that gets them rid of some chores.
I do get frustrated though when I'm among people who *do* have an interest in this field and *do* know about more manufacturers, models etc than the average and still keep repeating what is literally propaganda from manufacturers.
Anyway, there, I'm putting my soapbox away. Soap is not low-sudsing enough for dishwashers anyway.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
