The worry of a leaking water line dumping water into a boiler from a poor connection on an IC is nonexistent with a plate chiller. What a brewer uses to cool with depends on how much money is available, the circumstances and what makes them happy. Over the years I have went from IC to CFC to a plate. IMO, with my circumstance and brewing process, the plate works the best. What's nice about an IC is the cold break is left in the boiler. That's about the only good thing about them, that I can think of. Oh yeah, another good thing is they're relatively inexpensive. There have been posts about brewers that bought a plate and complained that the plate blocked up and were going back to an IC. Like someone mentioned. With a more "mature" system (I'm trying to figure out the level of maturity of my system. It was designed and conceived in 1987.) a blockage shouldn't occur. My plate is about 8 years old, it has never blocked. I never had to bake it in an oven. It's maintained as Blichmann recommends, except for turning it with the connection pointed down to drain. I have it bolted to the frame along with the pump and use a backflush piping/valving scheme to flush both of them after brewing. Once a year I run hot PBW through it and flush it out. I don't sanitize it. I circulate boiling wort through it, before turning on the water side.