Probably a bit late to this thread, but my experience.
Work has a few of the CIG transmigs, and they're reasonably decent machines. My favourite of the bunch of them is the 250i, but if you were willing to stretch your budget the transmig 175i+ will still be a much more solid machine than the weldskill machine you mentioned in the first place.
These machines are getting used (and abused, sigh) by apprentices, 2nd classers, and ticketed welders.

On the TIG side of things, I consider myself an amateur, only probably got about 20hrs torch time under my belt at the moment, most of it aluminum on a Miller dynasty. The other week I had to do some TIG with the CIG (hah, that rolls off the tongue!), and I was surprised that the lift start didn't drive me quite as crazy as I expected (only partly mad at times when I got the electrode stuck). After that, it worked a treat gluing some stainless onto mild.