Does anyone know how the top of the line BERNINA, PFAFF and VIKING computerized machines compare?
Reply: This question comes up all the time, and of course the owners of each kind of machine think theirs is the best. Quilters are often fans of Berninas, claiming that the stitch quality is superior. Although I don’t have the money to buy any of these machines, one day when I had some time to kill I went to the Quilting Bee (a fine quilting store in Mountain View, CA) and tried some machines. I tried the top-of-the-line Bernina and the Viking #1. I was quite unimpressed with the Bernina. The user interface was atrocious. It has a track ball controlling cascading menus, and there are two buttons (labelled something like ENTER and OK, or two other confusing names) that you sometimes have to push. There’s a very confusing small screen, with a display; it also has a cursur which is hard to find. I asked the salesperson to show me how to make the machine stitch my name. Neither of us was able to succeed in doing this. The Viking #1 had a user interface that wasn’t quite as bad. The salesp
