I have several questions so I can give an good answer. Are you going to use this for business, heavy duty crafting, or light crafting. There are a lot of great machines out right now, And I have my personal preference but I don't discount other brands. I own a Black Cat Cougar, and yes they are higher price wise, but when I purchased mine, I had a Cricut, and looking at the cost of it, plus cartridges, and at the Design Studio, my cougar was only about $50.00. People are shocked to see the price tag which I believe for the Lynx 12" which cuts a full 12 inches, starts around 500 or . But they are supreme machines, very heavy duty and are great work horses. The 24 inch cougar I believe is 1099.00. Like I said though if you have a cricut and carts, and DS. you are about at the cost anyway.
The gazelle I have heard is awesome also. So is the Pazzles. Here is a link to a site that has a comparision chart for a lot of the machines, not all of them are listed.
http://thatsscrapinc.com/ComparisonChar ... ackCat.htm. I know Tyler who is on this forum also, has a 24" machine, and has pictures on the make the cut forum showing how he cut a huge piece of vinyl, I think it was about 16 feet long. I hope this helps, and like I said there are a lot of great machines. I would recommend starting with the chart and investigating and seeing what each machine will do for you.