Because of special needs, I have purchased this sander new and found the initial usage quite satisfactory. The plastic gears wear quickly and after a few dozen hours the sander becomes loud and soon strips the gears. Ordering new gears and changing them is difficult, time consuming and expensive. Be careful of the brush wires they catch and break easily, you may even find it cheaper to buy a new sander - oops another $70-$90! Yes it may be a toss up. Sorry to say I've purchased Porter-Cable 9444 twice because I have not found another sander to fit the areas I need to sand. Yes, I have learned and since the second unit has failed for the same reason the first one did - no more Porter Cable 9444's. Reconditioned units must have new gears.

I was all ready to purchase the Fein Multi-Master Pro kit with the profile-sanding accessory until I found out that they are changing to an improved four-slot mounting system later this year because of a blade slippage problem. Fein has already changed all of their accessories to this new design, and even though they have an adapter available to retrofit their current tool to this new style mount, for what this kit costs, I wasn't going to pay top dollar for what is essentially already an outdated product. I will wait until later this year to purchase one when the tool with the new style mount is available.
br /
br /In the meantime, I purchased a rebuilt single speed PC 9444 online for twenty-nine dollars from Tools-Plus. It looked like new and if it weren't for the letter "R" stamped on the back of it, you would never know the difference.
br /The first thing I did when I got this sander was to wash the rubber profile blocks and profile mounting pads with a sponge in hot soapy water to remove the slippery powder coating that came on them from the factory. So far, I haven't had any problems with the profile blocks popping out during use.
br /I have used it mainly to do detail sanding for furniture refinishing, such as the corners of raised panels, fine crevices on turned table legs and bedposts, after first using a stripper and scraper to remove as much of the old finish as possible.
br /The sander is good at cleaning out those little spaces that normally require lots of tedious hand sanding with homemade profile blocks and sandpaper folded over the tip of a stiff putty knife. The PC 9444 uses an inline motion, so a final hand sanding is still necessary for a smooth finish. With the profile blocks, I use this tool with only two paper grits, #80 or #120, because I found that grits heavier than #80 disintegrate and leave a lousy scratch pattern, while grits finer than #120 wear out way too fast, leading to either shiny spots or paper burn through and the nasty black rubber marks several other reviewers have noted. By the way, Tools-Plus sells the Porter-Cable brand 4.5 inch X 10 yard PSA rolls for less than fifteen dollars. I can usually get enough for three profile-sanding sheets from one 2.5-inch wide strip. If you buy the optional PSA diamond pad for the PC 9444, you can cut your own PSA diamond sanding sheets for use without dust collection [because of no holes in the pad or sanding sheet]. The little hook loop diamond pads [with the holes in them for dust collection] come in five packs and are expensive at almost three dollars per pack, so I try not to use them unless I absolutely need to for dust collection purposes.
br /The only thing I don't care for about the kit is that there is absolutely no extra storage space in the case. Not even for a handful of the little diamond sanding sheets. Speaking of which, there aren't any sanding sheets included with the rebuilt kit. I also had to purchase several additional items to maximize this sanders functionality, such as, the PSA diamond mounting pad, the shutter offset mounting pad and the dust collector wand.
br /Overall, considering the performance and for what I paid for this kit, I think it was a very good value. If you are leery of trying this tool because of all the bad reviews on Amazon's site, a rebuilt tool may be the way to go. If it doesn't work out for you, at only twenty-nine dollars, you can afford to toss it.
br /

I was skeptical when I ordered it but a friend insisted it would be just what I needed for doing projects like cabinet doors. He was sure right. My old sanding tasks have become a breeze. So far it is holding up to heavy use.