Recommendations for Tea Maker/Brewers ?

really..

just heat up water in the microwave

Get a gallon pickle jar, clean it well.
Fill with water, toss in your tea (bags? loose in a tea ball? herbs in cheese cloth?) and set it in the sun on your porch in the morning,.... enjoy :P

I prefer loose leaf teas that steep in a tea ball - you can get a tea ball at Wal-Mart and most whole foods stores carry a pretty decent selection of loose leaf teas. I really like to buy stuff from enjoyingtea.com, and if you order from there, they usually send a nice laminated card that shows you how long to steep each kind of tea and how much of each to use, etc...

My husband bought me a tea set from there for Christmas and I usually just boil about 3 cups of water, put the leaves in the tea ball, let it steep accordingly, pour into my teapot, then enjoy for the evening. Some of my favorites are chai, jasmine (this is what the Chinese restaurants serve), orange spice, and strawberry black.

really..

just heat up water in the microwave

Just as my grandma taught me! lol. I tried using an actual tea pot, but my roommate used it more for her soup then I did for tea. It broke in less than a year. Back to the microwave for me!

Boil the kettle. Put it in a mug with a teabag. If you really like tea learn the right temperature for different tea kinds and buy loose leaves. Seriously, you want a machine to do that for you?

One problem with tea is that you tend to add milk and possibly sugar to taste. This adds to your daily calorie intake. Try green tea. You can get it plain or with lemon and so on (in the UK, Twinnings and Tetley have very nice varieties). It takes some perseverance but worth it in the end and it counts towards your fluid intake (8 glasses of water a day)

Do you mean a kettle? Surely everyone has one of those anyway?

Do NOT use a coffee maker to make tea. The water for coffee isn't boiling, and you need BOILING water to make proper tea. Unless you are making oolong.

i wonder if kettles are just a UK thing?

Do NOT use a coffee maker to make tea. The water for coffee isn't boiling, and you need BOILING water to make proper tea. Unless you are making oolong.

i wonder if kettles are just a UK thing?

D'you know I think they are. I went to Canada to visit a friend and she didn't have one. So I went to the local Walmart (ooo, it were just like Asda hahah) and got one. They had only about 4 different ones, tucked away on the bottom of a shelf - it really isn't their priority. As it was only for my use while I was there, I just got the cheapest one - equivalent of about a fiver - and expected her to chuck it out when I left. I went back two years later and she was using it every day and didn't know how she'd managed without it. And she doesn't even drink tea or coffee.

They are not just a UK thing. Everyone I know has a kettle.

Do NOT use a coffee maker to make tea. The water for coffee isn't boiling, and you need BOILING water to make proper tea. Unless you are making oolong.

i wonder if kettles are just a UK thing?

HAHA! american's are too lazy to wait for kettles to boil! all my friends ask me "why don't you use the microwave" when i put my kettle on.
the tea seriously does taste better for some reason with kettle boiled water over water done in the microwave, but to the OP like everyone is saying, buy a collection of tea bags pick one boil water and put both in a mug,
for cool i have a glass bottle that i will make tea (double the ratio of bags) and put in the fridge to have iced tea- i've made sun tea once and thought it was gross.

(also a better reason not to used a coffee maker is because the tea doesn't get a chance to steep- unless you are just using the maker for the water and putting the bag in yourself after)

I LOVE the teas from tea forte'. They have wonderful loose and bag teas and teapots too.