I got a $300 cuttter from us cutter and it works fine other than its super noisy. We make money with it.
Same with our old Roland. It didn't come with proprietary software, but came with a discount on Flexi-Sign, a tracing program that was pretty bad, they all were then, and Photoshop 2.0, for about $4K. 23 years later, it's pretty damn cheap. No, we don't make signs, and as I said, it's a real old version. As long as it cuts the names, I'm all set. But I do like the conversation as when I do have to upgrade, the flow is something to consider. Right now, we have the send the files to an old iMac, the ball shaped one, to act as a server. The version of Flexi won't talk to newer OS X on the network. Still makes us money.
Steve