KitchenAid Coffee Mill - is it me, or bad design?

A work colleague received the coffee mill from a client and as a non-coffee drinker had no use for it. After I admired the box in his office, he gave it to me. I was thrilled. I tend to assume the best about this brand, and on first inspection, the thing itself seemed to bear out my optimism.

Solid all metal base, simple, no-nonsense design -- it seemed the epitome of elegant retro-styling and functionality. A glass jar on top, a simple ring for setting the grind level, and a chute at the top of the base where the coffee comes out. A powerful motor. An on/off switch. No other bells and whistles. Yippee!

And yet: Looking for the right grind setting for my drip machine, I find no discernible difference in the entire continuum of settings from fine to coarse. What comes out is a tad coarser than I would like, but I can live with it. Still, if I was hoping to go back and forth between espresso and regular coffee, I'd be out of luck.

There is no receptacle to receive the grounds that attaches to the machine. They provide a small glass, like a standard juice glass, that you simply place under the chute. Needless to say, especially in winter, the statically charged grounds tend to form a film over the surrounding counter top and adhereing to the base of the machine.

They provide a brush, rather like a pastry brush to clean out the chute. Except, the bristles are quite soft and the diameter of the brush head is larger than the opening to the shoot. What you really need is something hard, like a pick, not soft like a brush to clean out a chute. So that's a dead loss.

According to Amazon, it lists for $180 and they're selling it for $99. Seems to me, for $100, one of the best names in the business out to come up with a better thought out desing than this.

It was free, so I'll use it until I feel like spending money. But it's not even as good as the Braun I had before, which I had thought was only OK. The Braun had a snap-on cannister that only spewed a fraction of the grounds out on the surrounding area. And the grind adjustments actually adjusted the grind. It was, however, noisy as hell.

I've had a Solis Maestro ($100 bucks or so since the Maestro Plus came out at $150, street price) for two years and am happy with it. It's great for drip, but takes some work to get an espresso grind just right.

I got the Kitchen Aid as a gift, but had the same observations you made. Though I like the look of it, it's stashed away in a box somewhere awaiting regifting...maybe back to the sibling who gave it to me.