We have the generic, $35 rice cooker from Costco. It's big. It works fine. I agree that the fire-and-forget aspect makes these things worth owning, even if they aren't exactly kitchen multitaskers. Risotto is a much more labor intensive process, but definitely worth the effort. Yum.

(Side note: Alton Brown, on his Good Eats show, always likes to point out the the only unitasker you should have in the kitchen is a fire extinguisher. He recently did a show on espresso, which was largely about exactly which machinery you should buy. If an espresso machine isn't an overpriced kitchen unitasker, I don't know what is. Back in my coffee-addiction years, I became handy with a press pot, which I now use for the occasional cup of tea.)