I just bought one in the Cyber Monday sales and it arrived this week. Today, I used it for the first time and it was very easy to set up and start using. It worked flawlessly and created such lovely, accurate triangles. I needed 240 triangles and couldn't believe how quickly I got them done and how easy it was to sew them together and the units did not need any trimming! Obviously I can't comment on longevity, but the learning curve was easy and I found it very easy to use the manual crank (very smooth).