I have had my 300E for about 5 years now and LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I've not had a single problem with it. I did have to have it serviced once because a mouse got into it and chewed up a wire.
I use my embroidery machine DAILY. To tell you how easy it is to use, when I bought the machine my husband was with me. He likes to sew once in a while. We got home. He unpacked the machine and started embroidery in about 30 minutes!
The 300E does use the compact flash memory card and you will need a pcmcia adapter. These are readily available. Get the smallest memory card you can find. The 300E starts to run a bit slow on the larger memory cards. It is suggested a 128meg but those are a bit hard to find. But you can use a 1 gig card. You can find them at Staples, photography shops and on Ebay.
Be sure to take advantage of the lessons. You will be amazed what this machine can do.
GET IT...........GET IT NOW!