Whilst no real preference on Coffee Machines, our household has one of these:
mypressi TWIST: easy elegant espresso
It doesn't make the worlds best coffee, but it's stupidly convenient and takes up little room. You do have to ensure you have a stock of NO2 cartridges though.
As for beans, you cannot go past St Ali here in Melbourne, who will happily deliver to you via express overnight post via their website,
St. ALi - Specialty Coffee. They import and roast all their own beans. It's the best coffee i've had in Melbourne, but that's my 2c worth.
I'm also spoiled here at work. We have a proper plumbed-in café coffee machine, a hangover from the dot com boom days where we had that, free food and juice/soft drinks. When the budget cut backs happened many years ago, all but the coffee machine, grinder, beans and milk vanished. Management knew not to mess with tech's caffeine supply obviously.
Good quality coffee is a huge combination of factors including the environment the beans are stored in (humidity/sunlight etc), age of beans (how long ago were they roasted) and even the type/quality of grinder and its setting. Also, water temperature, cleanliness of the machine (you have to keep 'em sparkling) and the pressure of the water as well. Even the way the coffee is 'tamped' into the handle affects it.
A good example was many years ago living in Sydney. The café opposite the office was run by a husband and wife. He was Italian and made one of the best coffees I ever had in Sydney. His wife could not make a decent coffee to save herself. Same coffee/machine/milk, different style of steaming the milk, tamping the coffee into the handle, and a totally different outcome!
