Personally I would go to a dealer(not a Singer dealer though), a lot of times they'll have a higher end trade in and get a much nicer machine than if you bought it new. The best thing is, if you have problems you take it in, and they'll either fix the problem, or possibly the problem was user error, they can tell you what you were doing wrong. Also a lot of dealers will have classes for learning the machine you bough. Another thing is, you can test drive the machines and pick which one suits you the best. I also wouldn't buy ANY kind of new Singer, but would happily buy an old one.