Aaron, I went to training for my EMC 10 yrs ago. Afterwards I realized that it did speed up my learning curve. I probably could have waded through the tutorials and information myself but it would have been a slower frustrating process. When choosing to learn by trial and error the number of service calls tend to go up as well. I have also been to training for AMAYA. Because it is so different from other machines, experienced embroiderers would benefit from it. Someone new to embroidery, I would absolutely recommend it. You also learn other important aspects such as software, maintenance and hooping. There is a lot of information to take in so keeping good notes is important because memory will only retain about 30% of it. As Rod mentioned there are travel related costs involved even though the training itself is free. Some find it difficult to attend because of jobs or disabilities. Others have several employees that need training or prefer to learn by another method. On-site and CD based training are available for that. Melco University has a list of all the options at http://www.melcouniversity.com/html/Training-Options.html Janel Harris Dimensional Designs http://www.dimdesigns.com DesignShop Digitizer Melco On-site Trainer