I bought my 1471 the same year you did Texas Sunshine. What a great machine. Mine is still going strong and I love it every bit as much now as I did when I first got it. (except for button holes at times!). I just recently bought a Pfaff quilt expression 4 and so far, am loving it. Just machine quilted my first quilt the other day and it went very smoothly. I had always hand quilted up till then but I can see that I may be doing way more machine quilting now.