I have had a janome for 5 years and love it... It is very quite and smooth... the others I have sewn on were just not as smooth... the hard part is you don't know what you don't know.. I think the best is to buy it local if you can so if you do need work it is local. That being said I did buy my machine local but I get more info off the internet than I do my local shop as they just don't look for other things since they just sell janome...