I had a Brother CS6000i, bought it from Amazon, and it's a pretty good lil machine
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Featur...sewing+machine
I then moved up to the Brother PC-420, also bought from Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised at all of the high end features it has for the price. Though it runs about $370. But it has a knee lifter and auto thread cut...two things I'd never had that now I can't imagine not having
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-PC420P...sewing+machine
I've since bought a Janome 7700, as I do a lot of quilting, and it has a large harp.
But I wanted to post about the 2 Brother machines.
Kif