Mary in Va--
Did you buy the BabyLock Ellure? I may be too late telling you about this but I used to have a BabyLock Ellure which I bought about 3 years ago. It was awful--the needles kept breaking on me and I could hardly get through a project without problems. I almost gave up machine embroidery. Then a friend told me about the Brother embroidery machines and I ended up buying the Innovis 2500D--I absolutely love it. The Innovis 2500D is a little higher in price than what you were talking about but I know Brother has some other models in your price range and from what I hear they are all great. I highly recommend Brother Embroidery only or combination Embroidery/Sewing machines. Good Luck!
Mary Anne

I have had mine for about a year now and I absolutely love it. I figured all I needed to begin with was something basic and I could move up later but I only do personal things and gifts for family and I haven't seen any reason to upgrade yet. It does everything I need it to do.

As far as the price goes, I paid $1000 for mine which seemed to be the going rate a year ago so I don't know. Nobody told me it was half price.

And for what it's worth, a lot of Baby Lock's machines are made by Brother. The only real difference between the Ellure and the nearest Brother equivalent are that the Baby Lock has more and different designs. The two machines even look exactly alike except the cover is a deeper blue. Both are nice machines though.

You have to be careful about being brand dependent too. Brother has some very nice embroidery machines but they have some really bad crappy ones out on the market too. If a company wants to pay less for a machine Brother will just make it with cheaper parts that break easier. The ones they make for Wally Word are the absolute worst machines in existence.