Our oven beeps once quietly when the timer is done. Our microwave beeps incessantly for a couple minutes, then less frequently after that.

The oven, where what's inside continues to cook and may burn if not attended to, beeps once.

The microwave, where what's inside has stopped cooking when the beeper goes off, screams for immediate attention until it gets in.

Am I the only one who thinks the beeping should be the other way around???

No, and in fact, my oven and microwave do act the way you say they should, oven beeps until you stop it, microwave beeps once. So don’t generalize from your limited experience.

 

Guess somebody started the day with sour milk in his Wheaties.

 

Hello again,

A little update on the Toshiba microwave oven.

First, the microwave oven does not cook as evenly as I thought originally. I can't yet explain why the first hamburger made cooked so evenly when any subsequent meats have not cooked evenly at all. If anything, less evenly than the Panasonic.

One of the good points is it does not make any noise. It's quite unbelievable really. No inside transformer noise whatsoever. First time I even experienced that in an oven or anything else like this. They must have varnished the transformer really well and welded the laminations together. They probably also incorporated DC current offset control which keeps noise down also.

As far as cooking, the power level I use most of the time is level 3, but on this oven it's a bit higher than with the Panasonic so it's a little strange because I am not getting the power level I want. If I go down to level 2, it does not help much because at that level it reverts back to pulse on pulse off, with the level 3 power. Now that might have helped, but unfortunately they use a 60 second timing period, where they keep the oven on for 40 seconds and off for 20 seconds. That 40 seconds is too long because it still causes overheating even though the average power (from the PWM) is lower. The Panasonic had a pulse timing period of something like 30 or 40 seconds, which worked better at power 2, but then again the power level 3 was just right and that did not go into PWM mode.
It's kind of ridiculous that they would use PWM when they already have an inverter in the dang thing. I know of another microwave that uses the inverter right down to the lowest level, power 1. Maybe I should have gotten that one instead.

What this boils down to is I cannot cook the same way I used to with the Panasonic. I have to come up with new ways to do mostly everything except boil water.

 

"The transformer" is now running at a much higher frequency. It is constructed much like the deflection transformers in a CRT monitor high voltage section. Much lighter and smaller than a mains frequency transformer, and undoubtedly much cheaper to produce, and using much less copper. I rescued the entire high voltage module from a retired Panasonic MWO, but I have not traced out the circuit yet. It is clearly made to be serviced as an assembly.

 

"The transformer" is now running at a much higher frequency. It is constructed much like the deflection transformers in a CRT monitor high voltage section. Much lighter and smaller than a mains frequency transformer, and undoubtedly much cheaper to produce, and using much less copper. I rescued the entire high voltage module from a retired Panasonic MWO, but I have not traced out the circuit yet. It is clearly made to be serviced as an assembly.

Hi,

Well the Panasonic also has "inverter technology" but it sounds like a regular microwave oven which makes a rather loud hum.
It could be that some use higher frequency and some lower frequency I guess.

With this new one I can't even tell when it turns off unless I listen for the relay click, which is also not very loud. Even a small room fan on the lowest setting will be much louder. I keep the beeper turned off (a nice feature BTW) because I don't like hearing a beep every dang time I hit a button. When I make coffee or tea I sometimes forget it's in there when I get involved in something else because it makes no noticeable noise when it finishes.
I prefer to have it quiet though rather than making that hum like most microwave ovens.