Before I began using my machine, I read everyone's reviews here, good and bad, and they all helped me with my experience.  I am a lifelong hand knitter, but have an opportunity to do some knitting for pay and can't possibly do it all by hand.  This does take lots of patience and above all weights and more than what comes with the machine.  There is a fair amount of handwork required for correcting of dropped stitches and ribbing, but once the straight knitting part is going, it works pretty well and quickly, but best with lots of weights.  I happened to have some weights from an old knitting machine, 4-6 ounce ones  with hooks and maybe 2 oz. claw ones.  Once I added these to the knitting, there were much fewer dropped stitches and the machine ran smoother.