If you don't intend to do serious woodworking
and like to putter a lot (and I mean a lot) the Shopsmith can serve your needs. But if you want to get some work done then get separate machines. I used my Shopsmith as a horizontal borer and a sanding station. It works great for those two tasks. Otherwise a floor model drill press beats the Shopsmith in every way as far as accuracy and correct drilling speeds. The table saw is dangerous no matter what others my say. The disk sander is almost always too fast for harder woods. The lathe is too light for many tuning tasks and as has been mentioned there is no quill at the tailstock where it is needed. I know the advertising makes it seem interesting, but for most people who really want to work wood, it will become frustrating very quickly. You will find that often after you have changed from one tool to another that you need to return to a previous set up for just a little correction and that will be a major task. A few will like the tool, but for most they will soon want to change to separate tools.