I guess I'm just a dishwasher neophyte. My old one was crude, loud, dried hot, and got the job done (to hot, dry dishes) in one hour. Rinse aid wasn't even a word in our household (we don't have hard water here - no water spots). But don't put in a rice cooker pot with rice residue in it - it'll be baked on so hard that you need a 1h soak to get it off.

The new one (Bosch 500 series) takes three hours on its default "auto" cycle. No prerunning the tap to get hot water for the first fill, no worries about rice cooker pots. It runs for so long (quietly!) that everything gets soaked properly and comes off, sparking clean, no problem. Both the consumable (brands) that came with the machine as samples - the tablets and the rinse aid - are stocked in large packages at Costco at a per-wash cost that's negligible. I do put in rinse aid because drying is a weakness in this machine compared to the old one. That, and you can't run two loads in the same evening after a party. Prewash? Who cares, the dishes come out clean.

And that's kind of the whole point isn't it? Not to have to geek out with your dishwasher. Just fill it, get it started and expect to have clean dishes in the morning.