"Not that there aren't other good choices, but either Mach4 or UCCNC will more than satisfy" agreed sort of....

Hi Craig et al - I think there are 100s plus of other good choices and that's part of the problem for newbies and veterans. There is considerable inertia (in some cases loathing) in the thought and practice of learning or adopting new stuff. This effect works for the established products very well. But times change and technology changes and to use a current term a "disruption" will occur. I think we are close to that in the hobby and light commercial CNC ecosystem with 3D printer tech intruding into CNC tech lowering costs and improving performance. I think R needs to explain what he wants to do with his router and what he thinks he may do in future. This will help choose the starting point (and future potential) for this millennial up-grade. If R's machine is in the stone age he will want to jump a few ages to at least the present (4th industrial age or digital age) with some future proofing (maybe) as tech changes quickly and what's good today maybe not "good" in 5 years time.... Mach3 was forced to redevelop to mach4 due to windows tech change. UCCNC will be the "same" in 5 years. But other systems will be quite different and better by then...

eg autodesk has reshuffled its extensions in Fusion360 and in the claim of providing better software increased its prices slightly. Fusion updates every week M4 and UCCNC update rarely. I'm not advocating F360 just an example... I use F360 now and I don't see a commercial rival at the moment. Its a very good all round manufacturing package and steadily gets better. But you still need controllers and drivers... Peter