When I got back into sewing a few yrs ago I had a 25yr old singer. I decided I wanted a newer one but couldn't afford the higher end on like I have now. I went to Sears and got a Kenmore made by Janome, it works great. Doesn't care what kind of thread I use or anything else. It doesn't weight much either. I got it for a great price and then bought the extended warranty from them. I don't need a dealer to get it serviced, just take it in to them (you can do a once a yr check) and they service it. I have all of my appliance warranties with them because of this once a yr check at no charge plus if they can't fix it, they'll replace it for free. For my machine that does lots of fancy stitches and the warranty I paid around 400 for it all. I took a class where we were learning how to make this quilt with all of these fancy stitches, etc and everyone else in the class had a higher end machine but I was able to make my machine do all that theres would do. There were a couple of things that their machines could do automatically but my teacher showed me how to do it with my machine and my quilt was just as nice as thiers. I now have a top of the line Viking but keep my Kenmore set up as well and when my embroidery machine is going and I want to mult task I use the Kenmore. Good luck on your search. Don't forget to check out the warranty on the machine.