Ok, I have one and if it was mainly for applique, I wouldn't have bought it. First of all, it loves quilters and has lots of designs built in, like HST, you can resize any of the blocks, for those who have a hard time following a straight line or getting 1/4 in right, the machine will draw the cutting line onto the fabric, which you can change the sewing line to suit your needs. You can scan your fabric in and then fussy cut your designs to where you want on your fabric, you can also layout your designs where you have little wasted fabric, (I have more wasted fabric with the GO) you can draw your own designs to cut, or scan your own designs in, resize them and cut, it has lots of built in designs, I made halloween decorations for my windows and doors with the grandkids and they loved it, it made good use of construction paper, I also used the built in designs to cut out footballs to decorate quillows for Christmas presents. Go to Brother's website and watch the tutorials and there are also some on youtube. You might have to buy a mat every once in a while and you have to be careful as to how you set the blade so you don't cut into the mat, but the mats aren't as expensive as the go's dies and unlike the go, if you don't have the design you want, you aren't stuck, you can create your own instead of going out and trying to buy the right die, if they have what you want. It's also great for scrapbooking, it'll even cut out your signature. There is a learning curve like every thing out there, the go, a pc, a new machine, etc. It's not that hard to figure out, I'm still learning but as frustrating as I've been sometimes, I've enjoyed the results even more.