NordicTrack E7.1 Elliptical Trainer

I've had this product for 1.5 years now. I assembled it myself (30 year old female with limited tool experience). It took me all evening but it happened. Two words, rubber mallet. There's a slight clunk on the left side but it seems to be a tightness issue that perhaps I could fix if it bothered me enough. It doesn't. The clunk becomes a much louder clunk when I do high intensity interval training and really work the machine. Even then it's not much of an issue. Don't care. I just reposition my weight slightly to manage it. It's not perfect gym-quality (i.e. the clunk), but it's better-than-home-quality and just what I expected for the price. Has it helped me lose weight? Nnnnope, not one bit. But it's helped me improve my fitness level by a lot which is more important right now, plus I can eat more without gaining ever since I worked up to 60 minutes/day 6x/week (took 6 months from completely sedentary), so that is a definite advantage to using the machine. The calorie-counter is absolutely not accurate, so don't even bother using it. I use http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm instead to figure out what I actually burned, and recommend that to others. To help you lose or maintain weight with the thing, I'd recommend 60 minutes/day 5-6x/week like I do, and like the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute recommend as well for weight maintenance and/or loss, and cut back 500 calories/day in addition to the cardio for the slow weight loss. I'm very happy with this machine and fear the day that it might break on me like some of the other reviews say, but so far so good. I waited a good long time before reviewing it because I was very skeptical in the beginning, too, like any of you would be. The fan - it's not wonderful. It points at my stomach so i have to tie my shirt up in order to cool off, but that's another thing that's manageable. -That's really all I can think to mention. Hope this helps!

I bought a new NordicTrack E7.1 Elliptical machine from Sears last week. It was delivered on 2/4/11 and installed that night and the next morning. Installation went very well with no problems. After choosing a workout, the machine displays "Start Striding" but the message never goes away. There is no indication of progress even after 20 minutes! The workout programs don't make any adjustments over time as they should. The box opened very easily. That and a serial number that's partially unreadable makes me think I got a used model.