I hardly need to make any comments gar has covered them pretty well .
If you are looking at the TM1 for the axis travel I suggest raiding your kiddies' piggy bank for the extra to go for the TM1P fully enclosed version with toolchanger and coolant. If a considerably smaller travel is okay go for a MiniMill. If you are doing jobs that are aluminum or plastic and need to remove large amounts of material quickly then you really should be looking for something with a faster spindle speed and rapids than a TM1.
You are not going to get a gearbox on either of these machines so you have to accept that they will not drive big face mills in steel where big is larger than about 1-1/2 to 2 inches. Even without the gearbox, however, they will drill easily up to 1" and tap perfectly well up to 5/8".
Regarding the control I learnt on a Haas so of course I find it user friendly. Based on comments and questions I have seen on the zone here I think it probably is more user friendly than most controls but it is different so many people who transfer from other machines do not fully utilize its features.
A very important advantage with Haas is that the same control is used on all their machines, lathes and mills of all sizes. This means you never have a serious learning curve on subsequent machines and programs can be transferred between machines very readily.
An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.