Thanks craftybear (Karen) for starting this thread.
I have a Brother 1500 and am loving it. I have gotten several patterns from Embroidery Library that I love and have also gotten several freebies from sewforum
http://www.sewforum.com/ . In fact just sewed one of the free designs from there tonight and like how it turned out.
But like others has said before, you should always sew out a practice piece just to check out how it will look.