Reply #15: I have done a good bit of research, that said, depending on the age you may

[HillbillyBob]

be able to get a few more years out of your old tank by replacing the elements, they cost about 30$ ea and anyone that can use a screwdriver and wrench can change them.
We have a large house and the master bath and laundry are at one end, the kitchen is 40 feet away in the middle of the house and the last baths are another 30 feet away at the other end of the house. The electric 50 gallon tank costs about 40$ a month to power and it is in the laundry that backs up to the master bath shower, that takes about a gallon of water to get hot, the kitchen takes 3 gallons and it takes 5 gallons of cold water to get hot at the south end bathrooms. It is a modular, think double wide 70 feet long.
We are going with a solar water heater the unit and attendant support will cost us about 3000$ all told that is 2 recirculation pumps one for the closed loop and one for recirculation of the cooled water back to the domestic tank, and two solar panels to drive the (12v)pumps and a heat exchanger to reuse our current tank. We will leave one of the electric elements in for very cold times, but it will be kept off most of the time as the solar unit even on cold days will produce 170 degree 'antifreeze' that circulated through the heat exchanger in our domestic tank.
Yes it sounds complicated, but once installed will need very little to no maintenance other than changing the 'antifreeze' every 5-9 years.
The price you are quoted for point of use heaters is about 2500$ too high, unless it is a European bosch system. Do you have natural gas or propane? You will have to have venting. Which should not add much to this or do you have hard to access plumbing? That price seems awfully high to me, unless you live in someplace expensive like NY or Ca. I have looked at good ones for under 1,000$, I did not opt for that because we live out in the boonies and getting a propane truck up our dirt road(hell when it rains I don't use our dirt road!) We would have had to have a tank, and 3 units, plus venting, plus the gas lines run it would have been about 10,000$ for the propane tank, burial, lines, vents etc, the cheap part was the heaters. Our solar water heater cost less than 1,000 for the unit, the rest of the system and the support for it will be another 2,000 to 2,500. We also bought a big enough unit that it will drive radiant in floor heating..next year or year after.
Electric units were out of the question as again we are out in the boonies up in the woods, and the power out here suxes, fluxes, and shuts down when there is any weather.
For those who simply have the problem of getting hot water to the shower/ sink there are kits that use your cold line as a return, a 110v pump, check valve and timer or switch, that can save you thousands of gallons of fresh water down the drain, which is especially helpful with like us you are on a well and septic system.
Just google up instant hot water, there are kits for off grid low voltage and on grid 110v. They don't eat a lot of power either.
a No power version hot water lobster http://www.hotwaterlobster.com/
Tankless and Recirculation systems google http://www.google.com/search?q=instant+hot+water+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a