I used a friend's Janome(17 year old 734D, also a great machine) serger for a few months to find out what the fuss was about. It was then I realized how necessary a serger was to complement my sewing machine in the projects I typically work on. After visiting several shops within an hour of my home, and spending hours online reading reviews and any manuals and documentation available, I had narrowed my search to three machines. Two, the Juki MO-735 and the Bernina 1300MDC were pretty much the same machine except the Juki is the economy, no frills model and the Bernina has all the bells and whistles. I just couldn't bring myself to part with the extra money for a screen that would tell me the settings to use, which is something I can easily look up in a chart. To its credit, the Bernina does not only differentiate itself in the presence of a screen, it also has a window in the looper area to indicate when the needles are in the up or down position (the Juki has a mark on the handwheel to indicate the up position), there are slight differences in the onboard tool sets and the Bernina MTC(micro touch control) feature makes fine tuning a stitch easier. I got along fine without MTC while using the Janome, so I still couldn't justify the extra expense. So Juki it was and SMP had the best deal and the best credentials. It was fun to unpack the Juki and all the goodies that came with it. The machine is sturdy and produces beautiful stitches. I had to try each of them just to see how they looked. I tried multiple layers of denim and it handled two, four, six layers smoothly. It has suction cups on the bottom to prevent it from dancing around. The onboard tweezers seemed a little flimsy and the 2 thread converter needed a little adjusting to get it to work well. It didn't want to stay in the upper looper's hole. Since the adjustment, it has worked well. Threading is a breeze with color coded paths and charts on the machine. All the controls for adjusting are easy to see, reach and adjust. Cutting the thread is not as easy. The thread cutter is dull, and does more of a tear than a cut. But my snips are always close so thread cutting is is not a problem.Customer service was great. Within the first couple weeks, the knife no longer parked. The person I spoke with needed to see the machine so they provided a label online, I sent it back the next day, they fixed it and sent it promptly back. Other than packing it up in a box, it was just as easy as when I drop my sewing machine off locally for repair and I don't need to pick it back up again. It gets dropped off again at my house. While the machine is great, its documentation is not. Unless you understand japanese, the disc that comes with the serger will better serve you as a coaster. It consists of the camera zoomed in on a person's hands as they thread, adjust and stitch on the machine. The commentary consists of a person with a runny nose providing brief phrases in japanese. The manual that comes with the serger does have an english translation can provide a good reference if you have the patience to page through looking for the section you need. The good news is there is a lot of information online that will help someone get started with this machine. If you search on the Juki MO-735, you will find pdf's of dealer training which contain detailed information and illustrations for threading the machine for various stitches. If you search its sister machine, mentioned earlier, there are instruction videos as well as the workbook that allows you to home school yourself in all the fun things this serger can do. And it is fun! I can't wait to start playing with the extra feet that came with it!