This sounds very much like the Mister Coffee horror machines I find in American hotel rooms. It's coffee, yeah, but, one step up from instant. Again, in that 3.5 minutes, your boiling water heads towards ice temperature in a Melbourne winter.

I have a home espresso machine. Not the cheapest, but a good one pays for itself in convenience, taste, and temperature. Keep it clean, and you get not only the coffee brewed by forcing near-bolling water through grounds, but the chance at frothed milk. Win-win!

Britni