The 500 dollar blender on my wishlist

All I have in my apartment is an immersion stick blender, which is useful and a good multitasker and compact enough for a lot of easy blending jobs, especially soups or sauces.  Lately I've been finding it lacking in the smoothie and drink making department, but I've finally experienced the straw that broke the camel's back. 

So I'm been digging these expensive chocolate soymilk protein drinks like from Odwalla or something, but it's basically soymilk, sugar (or cane juice or whatever they call it), chocolate, and banana (mostly for texture I think or else the drink would be too thin and watery).  Supposedly chocolate milk is good for you some how, like a great post work out drink.  Anyway, I get an idea for just a Mexican chocolate milk, just blend up milk, cocoa powder with some chipotle and arbol powder, and cinnamon.  Now, if you've ever blown bubbles into your milk when you were a kid, you would know that the milk can create a large mass of foam.  Well, that's what happened, milk spilled over the cup after 2-3 seconds of blending with my stick blender(even though I only poured enough milk to fill the cup half way).  I poured some of the milk out and some how lost a huge load of cocoa powder into the sink too because it didn't even get integrated into the milk.  I tried whisking the mix a little bit more hoping to recover something for the ordeal but it was no use as the drink was a gritty mess. 

I've been wanting to drink more smoothies lately since they're easy, tasty, and pretty nutritious.  And way too expensive when buying it outside at juice places or buying bottles of it.  Using my stick blender has been a hassle since it has trouble pulverizing frozen fruit.  After doing a little research on blenders and watching Alton use it, I came across the Vita-Mix.  Supposedly comparing regular blenders to a Vitamix is like comparing a shovel to a bulldozer.  This is basically food service grade stuff.  It apparently canpulverize the raspberry seeds in your smoothies and can make soup with the heat of its motor if what the people on the forum are saying is true.  The model I'm looking at is like $450.00 though.  Bleh.  I'll probably get one eventually, I'm totally loving what I'm hearing about this thing.