Reply by Loren

Been at this for 15 years and never used a fancy table saw
alignment jig. I hold an ice pick against the miter gauge to
and use it to check parallelism.

I have a slider now so no miter gauge. Anyway – the quality
of the saw (free of defect) and a decent blade matter more
than the quirky setup gauges, imo. Table saw is not substitute
for a jointer or hand planes. Getting accurate crosscuts in
24” cabinet sides can be achieved with a sled in most cases,
but better saws have more power and less runout/burn.

Miter gauges pretty much suck for crosscutting anything more
than lightweight and small pieces. The problem with American-pattern
table saws is the reliance on an 80-year old design concept,
not a lack of ability to be setup easily to acceptable tolerances
in terms of blade parallelism to the miter slot.