braindead,
Don't feel bad about asking questions. I recently went through the same decision process. I have a Rock Chucker and HAD a Lee Pro 1000 until I gleefully gave it away! I started shooting much more and working much more and those two don't mesh with spending time with my wife so I had to save some time somewhere. Being a newlywed, the wife time is important.
I looked at the Hornady L&L AP, Dillon 550, RCBS 2000 and Dillon 650. After using the Lee Crap 1000 for about 15,000 rounds (jamming every 25th round), I could not imagine having to manually feed cases into the press so I ruled out the 550 and the RCBS. The L&L priming system seems to be lackluster and if it was anything like the Crap 1000 priming problem, I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
So that left the 650. I am on a budget however and decided not to fork over the money for the casefeeder right away. This was contrary to many online recommendations from people who said that the 550 is faster than the 650 without a casefeeder. I figured that was bologna and I ended up being right, in my mind at least. I bought a 650 with the aluminum roller handle and the powdercheck system for about $500 shipped. I use my RCBS resizing/decapping and seating dies and a Lee Factory Crimp die in the fifth station. They work flawlessly. As far as feeding cases, the stock tube that comes with the 650 is only about 16 inches long. I went to my local plastic/plexiglass supplier and bought 10 pieces of 42 inch tubing that I fill with brass in my spare time (like when watching 24 or Scrubs). The 10 tubes give me enough brass for 600 rounds, which I can load in about 45 minutes at full speed. I also bought extra primer pickup tubes that I fill in my spare time instead of buying the Dillon primer tube filler. I can't see spending almost $200 for that but the Frankford Arsenal filler looks tempting for less than $40. So, if you don't include the spare time it takes to fill the brass tubes and primer tubes, I can load about 800 rounds an hour at full speed.
As far as buying a video, I thought the instruction book was fine as long as you know a little about reloading. Before using the press at all, I suggest setting it up and cycling it through about 20 strokes to get a look at all the parts and how it operates. Using a progressive in the past may have helped me out some, but not much. The key thing to remember is to advance the first primer to the priming station on the round turret before filling that case with powder. It makes a little mess with no primer. I've done that twice. Once on the first round I loaded (not quite) and once the second time I fired up the press. Hasn't happened since and won't unless I forget. Forgetting is unlikely now that I know how much of a pain it is to clean up. However, compressed air is a useful tool for cleanup.
Bottom line, the 650 is a gift from God and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Instead of taking 1.5 hours to load ammo for a match, it takes less than 15 minutes.
