I am just finishing up my fourth bed-sized quilt, and I have been quilting for just over a year. I have used the same long-armer for two of my quilts, but recently picked up some business cards so that I could have some other people on my list who would presumably do different things. One of the quilters said to me, "You should know that [my present quilter] uses a computer-guided machine, while I use a hand-guided machine (implying that hand-guided would be preferable). I thought it was tacky to criticize a competitor in this way, but I wondered about this.
Recently there was a thread on this forum about hand-made vs. machine-made. In my mind, it is kind of the same thing. I'm very happy with the computer-guided quilting that my present quilter uses, but I wondered if there are reasons to avoid computer-guided. Clearly it requires more skill and creativity to do it hand-guided, but is there a reason beyond that to avoid one over the other? Or is it more a matter of personal preference?