Ravenblack, If you do yield to temptation and make an online purchase, just learn from my mistake and find out where the nearest warranty service will be for the brand that you choose. I found out too late that not all shops that sell Singers, for example, have someone on site who can do the work. For machines that they sell, they take the responsibility of shipping them to be serviced, but if you buy it online, your local shop may have no responsibility or interest in helping you if something goes wrong. Qualified and authorized people who can repair the computerized marvels are often not easy to get to. In the huge state of Texas, for example, I learned that there were only two authorized Singer repair shops in 2013, and I was lucky enough to live "only" an hour or so away from one of them at the time. Sites like Amazon should be required to provide that information with the description of their products, IMO. The shop person was great and very pleasant to deal with. It took forever to get the part from China, and that may be worse than ever now. The good new is that once it was fixed (which cost me nothing under the warranty) it was great and I still use it quite a bit.