Actually, I was looking at those, buddy of mine bought one. And .... what happened was that with the Fein patents expiring on the multimaster, a whole lot of similar tools have come out good, bad and indifferent - including an offering for $40 from Harbor Freight.
Now, I have been burned on detail sanders before, the Porter Cable ain't too good. Least used sander I own. Great for sanding moulding but not much else; it sands linear, not orbital. So before throwing money at one, I wanted to check things out. Wasn't real trusting about the Harbor Freight or the other no-names, and the Rockwell hasn't been out very long.
But the patent thing and more competition has led Fein to drop the price on the basic Multimaster kit a lot. And the reputation is that they are a little better for production work, all-day use kinds of stuff. . So, while it's around $40 ( US) more than the Rockwell, it's worth a look too. I find that justifying over $200 for a tool is a lot harder than under $200, let alone explaining where that went to the significant other.
Very wide variety of blades, etc. I still do a lot of boat work, plus house carpentry and some flooring, which means I can get some use out of those oddball blades that Fein charges so much for - the other brands are not interchangable, so far as I can see. I'll note that both have saw blades that'd be useful for getting out old fin boxes, scraper blades for those annoying stickers on used boards and more.
And sometime this spring and through the next couple of years, I've got a date with my Fein plus a scraper blade, 'cos I have three linoleum floors to get up ( scraper followed by saw), a bunch of windows that need new putty ( and thus the old putty removed) , fancy trim to sand and more. It's gonna get a workout.
For that matter, I have a cabinet to build, finish and then put into place today, which oughtta be interesting. It has to hold about eight feet of cookbook shelf, plus kitchen toys, and those ain't light.
Cripes, that now makes what, eight or nine...or is it ten or eleven? sanders. From 8" disc down to 1/6 sheet pneumatic .... argh.... lemme think -
8" disc Milwaukee
5" and 6" random orbit, electric and pneumatic, Porter Cable and auto-store brand
Two half-sheet ...no, three half sheet sanders, one Milwaukee, two Porter Cable or old Rockwell
1 quarter sheet Porter Cable
Two detail sanders, one Porter Cable and one Fein
1 3x21 belt sander, Porter Cable
that 1/6 sheet pneumatic jitterbug sander, another auto store special.
And I don't even particularly like sanding.....
hope that's of use
doc...