My house mate bought me this blender as a present.

The glass bowl is an advantage for blending hot soups and making icy drinks, like frozen margaritas. As a chef, I've used many liquidisers, and this is quite good for getting things smooth enough to pass through a chinois.

The only problem, as the other reviewer has found, is that, unless you hold the lid on with a tea cloth, the top is likely to blow off, causing mass splatter based carnage in your kitchen, and possibly even injuries, as millions of droplets of burning hot liquid fly onto your skin. However, once you've mastered the art of the super safe lid hold manouevre, you'll be splatter free. Unless you've had one or two frozen margaritas already, which, obviously, I've never done....
The motor is quite low wattage, and as a result, powering through ice, and hard stuff, is difficult unless you pick the thing up and shake it.
Also, I've noticed that the plastic that attaches the bowl onto the motor gets quite a lot of crud stuck underneath and is impossible to clean unless you have a screw driver and spanner in your washing-up tool box.