I'm also in this boat!!! Checking this out and that and soforth and so on. Trying to decide on a sewing/quilting or a sew/quilting/embroidery. I just spoke with someone that helped me decide I really didn't need embroidery at this time. That for me at this point I'm most interested in decorative stitching and it would probably be more for the future that I would be interested in something like that and I probably would prefer to have a stand alone embroidery so I could continue to do things while embroidery machine was doing its thing. He told me that Janome is introducing a new machine on May 12th and its suppose to be absolutely awesome!!!!!! On the lines of a 6600, but better! :-) Since my machine is still working I think I'm going to wait and check out this little gem before spending my money!