Why I Drink Bottled Water

I grew up in a house with well water that tasted like ass. I then went to college in a city where the public water supply was so so nasty that you could actually see lots of stuff floating around in it. It also, perhaps not surprisingly, tasted like ass. It was around this point that I discovered bottled water, and came to the astounding (to me) realization that water could actually taste *good*.
After college, I moved out on my own to yet another city, where (being a bit cash strapped) I tried yet once more to drink tap water. It wasn't particularly good... but with some generic sugar free flavoring added, it wasn't all that bad. Over the years, as various water filtration devices came out, I tried pretty much all of them. And all of them would work... for a while. The filters never seemed to last as long as they should, and they never made the water taste as good as the bottled water did. But hey, I try to be environmentally conscious, so what the heck. At least the filters made me feel a little bit better about the water that I was drinking.
Then I started reading articles like this one. Turns out that those water filters I was using were doing a pretty half assed job at filtering the water, and in the process were also probably stripping out the fluoride. Not to mention that those ridiculously expensive filters I was buying could, if not changed frequently enough, become their own little bacterial breeding grounds. Needless to say, I rarely changed them often enough. Not to mention that a while reading through my cities water quality report one day, I discovered that my municipal water had a particularly high concentration of a very carcinogenic industrial cleaner. From a little research, turns out that this isn't all that uncommon in the US. So, as is so often the case, I turned to the internet to find a solution. Which is where I ran across the ZeroWater ZD-013 Filtration Pitcher with Electronic Tester, Filter Included. Not only does this thing have a pretty dang awesome filter, it also comes with a little gizmo that lets you test the number of particulates in your water, so that you know about how long your filter will last, and so that you can verify the filter is working. It's still getting rid of those essential minerals, but hey, I take a multi-vitamin ever day.
Man, has that little particulate gauge been eye opening. Turns out, my tap water has around 400 ppm of particulates in it. Which means that one of these $15 filters can be expected to last for around 12 gallons of water. While still not necessarily removing all the nasty chemicals from the water. On the plus side, running my water through this filter reduced the particulates to 1 ppm. Pretty impressive. On the other hand, my Culligan FM-15A Level 3 Faucet Filter with the filter I had been using in for around a month reduced this only to about 300 ppm. And with a brand new filter in it reduced the particulate level to a singularly unimpressive 200ppm. Nestle Pure Life Purified Water - 35/.5L, on the other hand, tested at a mere 45 ppm... almost all of which probably come from those essential trace minerals that are added back in after the water is purified.
And it tastes pretty damn good. Good enough that I generally prefer drinking it over any of the other crap that I could be drinking.
As for the fluoride? Turns out we're getting too damn much of the stuff as it is. Brush your teeth with a fluoride  toothpaste, and you're probably getting more than enough. Don't brush your teeth, and it doesn't really matter how much fluoride you drink.