Ah, Quality versus Price. I got lucky with my monster saw at work, I bought it from a cabinet shop in Las Vegas that went under, when I had my own company, and then convinced the powers that be to buy it from one of my olde business partners. It's a Beast and worth three times what I paid for it. When I first got to ART we had a little Ryobi contractors saw. I guess it was ok < notice I didn't say OK but ok> it had all sorts of cute attachments and the only reason I've kept it is that it has a built in router table on the right hand side of the table. I think the previous
TD bought it because it had those extra features, but as a main table saw in a scene shop it was crap, you could bog it down by ripping 1x4. There's nothing wrong with smaller light-weight contractors saws as long as you don't want to make them the central part of a large scale production facility. I do have to say it is disappointing the amount of plastic and zinc parts you find on most tools now days. When you set the fence on a saw you want it to stay there and not flex 1/4" as you push a piece of plywood through it, but at the same time thos contractors saw are used pretty much for rough sheeting and framing rather than high end finish work.