I love, love, love my Viking Ruby! However, unless you really intend to do ALOT of embroidering, it would be more machine than what you would probably want. I do agree with the previous poster who advised you to stay away from anything that uses embroidery cards as they are definitely old technology. I did have an opportunity to *play* on a Brother recently...not sure of the model but it retails around $1200-1400. It was a nice little machine preloaded with Disney...small hoop size, though. Because it was being used as a demo machine, I could have purchased it for 750. I did consider it because my grand daughter loves Disney....and that would have been pretty much all I wanted it for so I decided to pass on it. I, too, am retired and I just think twice before I buy things now. Seriously, I would suggest you visit several different dealers and 'test-drive' lots of machines.