I have the studio cutter (at the time it was the only way to be able to get custom dies). I love it and have very little waste on any of the straight cuts. There is a little bit more on some of the curved cuts (rob peter to pay Paul for example) but the joy it becomes to sew together is just beatiful. (Especially for an over zealous relatively newbie.)
With purchasing any of the strip cutters you can easily make diamonds (whatever angle you chose), squares, and with different sized strip cutters you can even make rectangles. The dies can be a little bit expense, but those rotary cutter blades aren't cheap either! And the dies last for years, even the ones I use weekly!
I'm starting a red and white quilt where I'm making an Irish chain (kind of) with small pinwheels (using 1" HST). The rotary cutter and I don't always get along so I couldn't imagine cutting out all those HSTs any having any kind of decent accuracy without it.
I've started with the back. I had some fat quarters I picked up in the same line as the binding fabric and have decided to make an off centre focus piece on point in the upperish left corner on the back using the rob Peter to pay Paul die and it's coming out beautifully. While I agree cutting machines aren't right for everyone, I think for some of us they are a great tool to allow us to broaden our quilting horizons, which is never a bad thing.
If you have time before selecting a machine, I would recommend reading Ebony Love's book first and the. Deciding from there. Or, if you have friends who have different machines try them out. I'd invite you over to try my AccuQuilt Studio cutter out, but Ontario in Canada is probably a little to far to come just to try it!