well....I did it, I now have a new Bernina 590 instead of the 570. I did sew on it and it seemed smoother than the 570 and was already updated to the new firmware. I do know that all new models of all the manufacturer's usually have a few bugs in the software that it takes all of us who sew in the wild to find. So, my plan is to try and use the 590 frequently and run her through her paces. Looking forward to going back to stitching. I also have heard from a few more people that they like their 590's and hoping that the negative reviews that I read from earlier were related to that firmware update. I however, really do think the 570 I had was one of the ones that had some issues. Again, I know every manufacturer has a few of those machines that escape the quality control process and the problems I had with the 570 were intermittent.