DonnaC

I had the Brother PE 700II and loved the machine. It's very user-friendly and has a maximum 5x7" hoop. It uses .pes format designs. I paid about $700 from overstock.com.

My cautionary tale is this. Unfortunately I don't have a place in my sewing room where I can leave the machine set up all the time. In the process of moving the machine, I bumped it against the edge of a table and cracked the screen. There followed an odyssey of contacting authorized dealers and sewing machine repair people- anybody I could think of. No one can obtain the parts to fix the screen. I can send it back to the manufacturer at my expense and they will look at it and fix it - "IF" it's a warranty repair. I already know it isn't, the machine is out of warranty. So if I send it to them, they'll just ship it back to me as-is, again at my expense. It's been very discouraging to say the least.

Therefore, I would consider it a "throw-away" machine, which is really unfortunate. But if you're going to leave it set up somewhere it will be safe and sound, and you only want to spend a little bit of money right now, it is a great machine.

Sorry that got so wordy!!

Edited to Add: The PE 700 has a direct USB port to add designs to the machine. The PE 700II does not; you have to use a computer to transfer them. So if I had to do it over again, I'd spend another $50-100 and get the PE 700.