The right filters and you can drink tasty water from a sewer line. For
the water you describe the minimum I would use is a two stage filter,
one for the big chunks, and carbon for taste. With a decent quality 6
stage RO selling for $260 at costco, and tap water I have no serious
issues of any kind with, it isn't a great leap for me to make. With
regular filter changes and a 10+ year system life, its like $3 a month
for all the clean tasty water I want.

Isn't "most" weaselly enough? My point is that I am not looking for
some nitpicking debate. All I really wanted to know is if poeple who
buy the $59 RO units on ebay and give the seller 100% positive feedback
are getting a much better deal than if I buy the unit at Costco, and to
make a post that puts up a summary of the information I have found via
lots of looking around.

My goal, and the way usenet used to work is that I could put up the
information I had found so far, and get that information refined from
knowledgable actuall users or people in the field of expertise.
Diluting information with noise may be fun for the idle, but it takes
much of the value out of usenet.