G'day all,
replying to your last post Bansshee, on the taste of distilled water. The reason that most people notice the "taste" or more accurately the lack thereof, of distilled water is that our palates have become accustomized to the taste of the dissolved solids etc. and it takes a little while to actually "reacclimatize" to the real thing. It sounds weird but when drinking chilled distilled water, it tastes sweet. I have also noticed this when drinking chilled rainwater, but definitely NOT tapwater. As you rightly say, its a matter of personal choice to drink or not to drink DW.
I just thought it was worth mentioning the benefits seeing as how currently, bottled water is outselling soft drinks about tenfold. Obviously, there are a lot of concerned people out there. Anyway, if I made a choice to go out and spend money on bottled water it would be DW rather than spring water. The pricing is about equivalent.