Dishwashers?

Personally I've never lived in a house with a dishwasher before, and I've only seen it used once at a friend's place. I have to say I don't really understand the use of it (this might be because I'm so used to just hand washing, it can be a nice time to just do something repetitive and think). Either way dishwashers are big resource hogs, they are major users of both electricity and water. But it seems that people tend to use them as frequently as they can. So the suggestion is to wait till they're full to use it, even try to cut down on the number of plates and utensils used at meals to reduce having to clean them, and to try to let things air dry over machine dry which takes extra electricity. Better then all of them would be to return to hand washing, and control the amount of soap and water you use and let run down the drain.