Reply by HorizontalMike

Ron,
My biggest suggestion when buying anything New:

1. Do NOT buy their bottom line or ”entry level” model. Buy two model higher on the food chain.

All of these companies, driven by competition, will offer a bottom-end piece that more often than no, will have way too many “issues”. This could be in the form of poor machining, poor setup, mismatched parts, and more.

2. Consider buying a used 6” jointer (NOT new). There are tons of them that come up on CL all the time. For example just check out all of these in the Flint area:
http://flint.craigslist.org/search/tla?query=+jointer&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=
FWIW, I actually got lucky and found a $700 8” Grizzly G0593 on CL when I was looking and it was within an hour of my home in Texas. If you can be patient and you just might find what you need for much less than new price.

UPDATE: Also when buying used, if the product is only 2-3 years old, most of the bugs will have been worked put and/or corrected before you get it.

-- HorizontalMike -- "Woodpeckers understand..."