Hi Folks, Just wanted to share my experiences with humidifiers which are very useful if your kids has frequent cold or stuffy nose.

There are various kinds available in market. The most famous being evaporative & ultrasonic.

I have used a couple of evaporative kinds from Vicks & Bionaire, they operate by using a filter and fan to produce the mist. Unless you clean the filter & humidifier every day or every second day, the filter collects mold / mildew and becomes harmful for use. They are also noisy due to the fan.
It does have the advantage that the filter absorbs the hardness / bacteria from water and makes the mist safe.

Tired of changing the filters very often, i tried to look up the ultrasonic filters. There are a lot of brands on the marker ranging from 50 bucks upwards. Since these do not have filters, you need to normally add de-scaling agents and anti-bacterial additives to the water for ones on the lower end. Ultrasonic ones are quite as they do not have a fan.

I decided to go in for an Air-o-Swiss AOS 7135. I purchased from Bed & Bath for $150 after using the 20% discount coupon that comes in mail very often but it is also available at Amazon.com for $150. It has a de-mineralization catridge and also uses a silver stick for anti-bacterial property.
Although expensive to buy and operate ( to replace the catridge & stick ) i am happy with performance and its quite operation and it produces an ultra fine mist.

Hope people will find this information useful

Hi Folks, wanted to update this thread. I bought the humidifier in Oct and it worked fantastic till now but suddenly it has stopped producing mist. After going through all troubleshooting steps, i called the cust. support for Air-O-Swiss. They asked me to send it to them as it has a 3 year warranty but what annoyed me is that they will not pay for the shipping.
After buying the most expensive unit, i expected it to work seamlessly for a few years and and the company even wants me to pay the shipping charges as well to send it for repairs.

The other units i have owned before this at least worked for years.

Hopefully i get my money worth after the unit comes back after repairs.