Sunday nite I'll have to print this whole post and highlight everything and then check when I am sitting in front of the machines instead of trying to remember everything. Some of the things mentioned are greek to me :-)

Call me old fashioned but I love the good old knee control for speed. Too bad they do not make these anymore. I guess when the companies got away from putting machines into the cabinets whenthey sold them , that is when they dropped the knee speed control. And by the way I also miss buying the cabinet with the machine.
New options are :more in the feet , Free motion, 1/4 inch, walkingfoot, open toe applique, piping, cording, you just can not have enough feet.
A cabinet ( so the machine base is recessed) with a really nice big surface area around it would be a great. I would accept less options on a machine to get a great base cabinet. I would forgo a needle up or down for a great cabinet( but most machines have this as a standard unless a really inexpensive machine) . The surface area you have is so important. After that the biggest opening for rolling up quilts to do the quilting.

As long as the needle thread catches the bobbin thread with no big loops or tight pulls I'm good to go. All those other things are nice but they don't really matter. I love sewing on my vintage Singer and all it does is forward and reverse. If there's a problem I can usually fix it. The other day the set screw in the small belt wheel broke and fell out. A small piece of wooden skewer later and I was stitchin' up a storm!

Hehe you sound like me :)
Yes fancy stitches are pretty and all the bells and whistles look nice but when it comes down to it, I'll take a simple machine that does a gorgeous straight stitch over the bells and whistles any day. :)

I love the walking foot on my Pfaff.

Oh, I have some with a few bells and whistles and I use them too, but there's just something soothing about the sound a vintage machine makes.

On the older Pfaff I love the IDT (walking foot), needle up/down, change in needle position, the low bobbin indicator, and the stitch-in-the-ditch foot.

On the BabyLock I love the tie off feature, needle up/down, huge display, awesome stitches (cleaner stitch than the Pfaff), drop-in bobbin, separate bobbin winding motor. Thread cutter is nice but I still use scissors a lot.

I'm a pretty simple girl. I like a machine I can sit down at and sew right away without having to read a manual. The only "fancy" features I really appreciate are the needle threader (but as long as I can still see to thread a needle this isn't a big deal) and the ability to have the machine stop with the needle in the down position (again, another convenience feature as I can certainly turn the wheel to lower the needle.)

Remember, the more expensive the machine, the more complicated it will be to operate.

Perfect stitch, perfect bobbin winding tension, and most important a good user manual. The new machine manuals are almost useless. Most will tell you what to do but not how to do it.

Mad quilter; a cleaner stitch than a pfaff? Could you explain what to look for please? Not really sure what you mean, so not sure what to look for.
Thank you,
Jack