Well I have had a 'mad' moment and purchased a Brother 700 11e from eBay - and what can I say? brilliant! It may be an older machine but works perfectly. I was also given a CD with the machine, which I shoved in my PC - it took a bit of meddling, but the CD has over 10,000 designs on it, and by using the old fashioned USB cable that came with the machine I can download onto the 'F Drive' as mentioned in its bumf and either save the design to the machine (it can only remember 12 extra designs! or sew straight from the PC!
It came with 3 hoops, 40 reels of Brother thread (Plus an extra card with some seriously weird designs on that some poor soul paid £64 for!) - all for the princely sum of £380....
I am seriously impressed with the stitch quality........have had a go even with some ghastly metallic thread which none of my other machines like - no problems at all. So, chuffed I am as I never thought I would be able to afford one, and to be honest, it seems easier to operate than my Pfaff Performance 5!