mrsmac - have you got the white one? they changed the plastic for the new one. It only has 2 levels, but you could always buy a second 1.5L tray and make it 3 levels. I think the issue with 3 levels was that lots of microwaves were not large enough to fit it inside.

re rice, for just 1 cup you can do this:
 1 cup rice, 1 1/2 cups water for 6mins, give a stir then another 3 mins. Done.

Regardless of what you use to cook it, the type of rice will make a difference. Even within long grain white rice I hav found that different brands give different results. I always use riviana basmati rice now.

With brown rice, the grains can have differing water content which means you will not always get the same results even with the same brand, cooked the same way, you can get variation each time.