Hi Turtle, for the extra $50 I'd go for the refurbishe. That usualy means the orginal box was damaged or something.
I find that I use mine alot. Kathy and I both did a quilt with all embroidered blocks of flowers. I find that I like to add embroidery to the solid center square of a quilt block.
If you look in the picture page
http://www.quiltingboard.com/posts/list/8444.page this quilt was down on the futura. It was raffled off for the Dairy Princess program and raised $200.
Once you get going you'll find the machine very user friendly.
One of the things I liked besides all the differnt formats you can use is that it connects right to your comper so no need to buy all thoese PED cards and such. I save all my embroidery files in a folder in My Doucments.
My machine is always hook up to the computer and I can be on surfer or reading messages as it working. Infact it is embroidering right now as I'm writing to you.
If you have any questions in particuls just pm me or Kathy we would be glad to answer them