On 19/01/2011 06:39, Dave Platt wrote:
In ,
wrote:

Yep, that's the way most of 'em work. The problem is the filament in
the magnetron. Much shorter and you don't get any power out cause
the filament ain't hot yet. With enough mass inside the oven, it
averages out pretty well. For a single frozen hamburger at 1100W, not
so much.

Yes, you can buy a microwave with fine-grained setting of continuous
power at most any retailer...for 3X the price.
They have to keep the filament hot while reducing the power. Much more
complicated and not a commodity item much higher price.

Not that much higher these days, I think. The Toshiba "inverter"
microwave ovens have a variable power level of this general sort, and
they're commodity items to the extent of being buyable at Costco and
probably other big-box stores. They're somewhat more expensive than
ovens fixed-power magnetrons, but not all that much.

However... I had one, and it died within a couple of years in home
use. Our previous microwave had lasted for a couple of decades. I'm
not sure whether this was an odd failure in this unit, or was
characteristic of Toshiba inverter microwaves in general, or just an
result of the "race to the bottom, in price and in quality" which
seems to be affecting the whole consumer-electronics business these
days.

I bought a fixed-power-output commercial-service Amana as a
replacement, in the hopes that it'll last rather longer than the
Toshiba did.

My Panasonic has an inverter. Works OK, and and an energy meter
confirmed that it doesn't just cycle from full power to off when running
at lower power levels.

But it does tempt you to experiment. Even though the guidebook warns
against trying to "boil" a perfectly cooked egg in its shell, I thought
it worth trying using lower power levels. The first egg was perfect,
using a rather complicated cooking schedule. The second was very soft -
barely cooked. The third I'd rather forget, but it took a long time to
clean the oven, and SWMBO wasn't amused as she was standing almost next
to the door when it was blown open. It also took me some time to repair
the safety lock...

--

Jeff