Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First off, the posted 12" x 8" work area is completely misleading and just plain WRONG. For engraving, there is a clamp built into the bed that has to hold the item being engraved. The maximum size that clamp can hold is about 3.5" x 8". That means no 8x10 engraved photos, no letter-size certificates. A local restaurant recently wanted me to engrave their logo on a plywood check presenter that was only 4" x 9" - even that wouldn't fit! Items being engraved have to be in the clamp - it is the focus point for the laser, so sitting something on top of the clamp results in blurring. I contacted the seller, and their response is that the work area they described is actually the *cutting* area, and that it's "slightly smaller" for engraving. I personally consider the difference between 12" and 3.5" to be far more significant than "slightly smaller". Also, the clamp has a lip that sits about 1/4" or so above the bed around it, so if you tried to put something bigger in the bed, it would not lie flat. You can't have that when you're cutting things with lasers! Another beef I have is that is says very clearly in the documentation that this will work with CorelDraw. I spent another $100 on the software because of that, only to find that it's not true. I don't know if it's a versioning issue (the CorelLaser plugin is from 2013, so there have been a few newer versions of CorelDraw since then), or if it's something else. I asked the seller about this too - crickets. Why does this make a difference? The LaserDRW software that comes with the laser has rudimentary tools for drawing simple shapes, but you can't get anywhere near the type of flexibility that you get with professional software like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. I believe that you can only cut with this laser from vector designs (which is what CorelDraw is for), but since CorelDraw doesn't work, I'm unable to cut the maps and custom shapes that I bought this thing for in the first place. The LaserDRW software won't even allow me to paste in vectors created in other software. Completely useless. The knob that adjusts the power of the laser has no tick marks of any kind, so there's no way to tell how much power you're using or match the settings from a previous job. I ended up attaching a post-it with some arbitrary marks on it so that I could at least have some sort of reference point. After some trial and error, I figured out that the top left corner of the engraving clamp is at 45mm (x axis) and 35mm (y axis). During this trial and error, I also discovered that some rocket scientist put a hole in the bottom of the metal box right directly under that top left corner, so I burned holes in the table below the machine when I was trying to find that spot. The seller responded to my first email to them, but has ignored subsequent emails. I was willing to try to work with them to figure out work-arounds for my issues before judging the machine, but their lack of response has forced me to post this bad review. I deeply regret not buying one of the cheaper lasers in this category. They are less powerful - thus not capable of cutting, but at least they have a significantly larger work area.