I like your thinking mark! For me, I would really appreciate having a vocal and experienced active member here to steal ideas from, and help inspire me to do some interesting mods with my machine. The pm1440gs reads on the data sheet to be a nice machine, except for the lack of variable speed, it comes very close to being the lathe I have been looking for the past three years (yes a wider bed and more weight would have also been on the list).
They told me last Monday delivery in 4-5 weeks, so if everything is on schedule, it's now 3-4 weeks. I have a lot of cleaning in the shop to do, a couple lathes to clear out, a bunch of old benches, cabinets, stands and misc. New cabinets to place, tooling, rearranging... it's fun times again! Possibly a manual mill to diy cnc gonna be a nice fab shop for personal and 1 off small scale projects.
Keep the energy and enthusiasm!
Rich