another vote for Juki here! I've had a 2010 for two years now and I love it!! The newer version is pretty much the same but you get purple and a couple more feet. I also looked long and hard at the Janome 1600P, it looks like a really nice machine and I've had great luck with Janomes. I don't think you can drop the feed dogs with the Janome straight stitcher but I do my FMQ with my dogs up and my stitch length set at zero so it wouldn't matter to me. My Juki 2010 I could get locally for a really good price so I went with that and no regrets!