Vertex Water Products, of Mont-clair, Calif., introduces the HardWater Wizard, an electronic water conditioner that is an alternative to water softeners. It reduces scale and scum caused by hard water minerals, reduces use of soap, and eliminates scaling in pipes and water heaters. It also produces an oscillating electronic field of 1,000 cycles per second or more in the water, which alters the state of the hard water ions. Instead of hard calcite crystals, which form lime scale, the hard water minerals become an amorphous mixture that stay in solution after exposure to the cyclic electromagnetic field.