Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Down grading to one star. Don't do it...RUN AWAY from this machine. It is a small fortune to buy and to purchase overpriced supplies...on top of that, all of the projects in design space will cost you anywhere from 4.99 +++...they intermingle project components with additional charges in with the "free ones" so it's hard to realize you are imbedding expensive items until you go to make it, and they have their freaking hand out again for money. They just upgraded their software recently and there are NO FREE WRITABLE fonts available and the upgrade wiped out and made it impossible for me to use my own fonts. The Cricut Design Space is the worst thing I've ever had to deal with in my crafting experience. I have wasted so much of my holiday weekend trying to create projects only to have the system crash on me after spending over an hour designing something (does not have autosave btw - lacks even the most basic functionality). I recreated the project several times...crashes again . Finally get it to "print" and then the dumb machine ate up my expensive cricut shimmer paper. Run as fast as you can from this infuriating, frustrating machine and its ridiculous software. Neat, but the charges are never ending. You think you invest a few hundred in a craft system, that you can make a few projects without having to put out a constant stream of money. The interface to use the machine is internet based and completely entwined in Cricuts commercial website. You build a project, go to print it, and there is a fee. There is no way to keep a permanent filter to block all purchase content. Some products show an amount, but if you don't pay attention when you click on it, you get through your project, go to print and see a fee, you have to go in to each item you've added to figure out which one has the charge attached so you can remove it - it is not obvious. You get a "free" two weeks to the cricut content...as soon as the trial expires, your completed projects are no longer any good (unless you want to pay .99 every time you turn around). I HATE the interface. I want a stand alone interface with only the content included with the original purchase. Unless you plan on using this to make money, you're going to be knee deep in add on fees (not to mention mats, supplies, markers...I'm up to $400.00 already between the system and the supplies. After all that, Cricut charging for clipart is absurd. You can pull in your own clipart, but it's like 10 extra steps. What a racket.