Question:
Does anyone have any experience with these electronic "water softeners"?Do they work?

Answer: Water Conditioning & Purification Magazine, July 1998, page 58, byLarry Henke:

".....The claim of magnetic scale prevention technology is not new;in fact, it's not even 20th Century technology, and we probably knowas little about it now as we did in 1890, when the first related U.S.Patent was issued for a magnetic scale prevention device.....Whilethere remains very little 19th Century technology untouched by 20thCentury science, magnetic water treatment has not advanced.Why, by now, 108 years after an early patent on the process, is thereno consistent, regular demand for magnetic treatment? If suchmechanisms truly works as claimed, boiler engineers the world overwould by now have incorporated magnetic devices into boiler designand scale would routinely be collected in magnetic chambers.Micro-magnetic descalers would routinely be attached to coffeemakers, irons, domestic water heaters, etc. This is not the case."

Cranfield appear to be doing some work(http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/water/magnets.htm)