Living in Central America, rice is a staple in my diet. We make it every day. Here's an exerpt from an earlier post of mine about cooking rice.
"I always cook rice in an automatic rice cooker, if available. Rice cookers are the single most common small appliance in Latin American and Asian kitchens- more common than even coffee makers or toasters. They are by far the easiest way to prepare good rice. Amazon.com has a great selection and a lot of user reviews. Regular rice cookers cost from $25 to $50 and do a great job on white rice. Fuzzy logic cookers are much more expensive, from $100 to $200, and supposedly do a better job cooking brown rice and other varieties. I've never used one so can't comment further. The inexpensive regular cookers come in 2 styles, either with a separate, removable lid or with an attached, hinged lid. I use the first style. Panasonic and Aroma are both good brands. I've had poor success with Black and Decker, Oster and several of the others."