Also, you could go with a vintage machine that is all metal and easy to maintain yourself. Some from the 1960's are still all metal and make nice straight stitches and have cams to make decorative stitches. You can get one for under $200. You might consider that too!! My travel partner is a Singer 301, shown in my avatar. She's wonderful, only a straight stitch machine, but I do decorative on my SQ9000.