I bought my wife a real fancy one a couple months ago so my younger daughter would actually 'eat' good food, as she is an incredibly picky eater. Well, when making her the strawberry 'smoothie', sometimes things like spinach, etc accidentally fall into the concoction, and miss picky is none the wiser. The wife absolutely loves her blender, so much in fact that I ended up purchasing one for my older daughter to make baby food with, and my sister who loves her frosty slushy drinks! Both have had them for a few weeks now, and just like my wife, absolutely loves them. Theirs weren't as fancy as my wife's, but they all work just as well as the others in their lineup, it's just how many bells and whistles you want/need on it to make you happy.
I was sneaky about it though, I had asked them to go to Costco with me to help me decide if I wanted to make a major purchase or not. We went and watched the road show for about 10-15 mins, and then talked about it as we were walking out of the store. Little did they know, I had purchased one for each of them and they were sitting in my trunk. While we were chatting about all the cool things we'd learned they could do, I popped open my trunk, pulled out one for each of them and yelled Surprise! They both almost fell over, it was so cool! Weeks on now, they still laugh when I ask them how the Vitamix is working out.