hvlp

As the OP here, I have to agree! I hope all of you will accept my humble but heartfelt thanks! The conclusion is. . . I will determine which of the two HF units has the two stage turbine and focus on that one. Either way I can neither afford nor justify the around $1000+ machines. So for the apparent differences in the $69/$39 HF and the $200+ CH units, I will go with HF. I luv this group! <s>

I bought the same sprayer you offered in the link. I picked it up 3 years ago and paid the same for it. It comes with 3 different tips and nozzles. It's a great value and works better than anything else I've tried. I haven't done a spray job yet that I'm disappointed with. I've sprayed everything except shellac (including waterborne finishes). I've had no problems at all getting what I consider to be perfect results. The only issue has been dust and bugs but I made a spray booth to take care of that. You can only change flow and viscosity but that's enough for great results. My brother has an accuspray setup at work that I've borrowed and I can't say it does any better than the cheap HF model. More settings with the Accuspray means more experience required and more variables to screw up. Same thing goes with air brushes. My brother has a single action and a double action brush. I do a lot better with the single action because of fewer settings.
Getting viscosity correct is pretty easy. I don't even use the drip cup. I'll use paint as an example. Fill the spray cup about 1/2 way with paint and then add about 1/4 cup of thinning agent. I use flowtrol/penetrol and also use mineral spirits when doing oil based enamel. I use both for reasons I won't get into here. After adding some type of thinner, stir and look at how the paint moves around. You can gauge viscosity this way. It should look about like heavy cream. I also pull out the stir stick and watch the paint stream off. This is also useful (keep a count). After getting the viscosity to where you want it, close the nozzle all the way and then open to a conservative flow. Test on some scrap and look at the droplets. Adjust the flow to get the desired coverage. If the drops are splotchy and you can't resolve by slowing the flow then the paint needs to be thinner. If the paint runs then you've got it too thin.
Same goes for any material really. There's a lot more to spraying like distance to the work, temperature and so on but you'll figure that out through use. All turbines put out heat but that can be remedied (if needed) by working in shorter time periods. I've sprayed 20 minutes straight without issues. I've sprayed furniture, siding, interior walls, moulding, metal and even canvas with this sprayer.
One other point...you don't need to clean the sprayer after every use. It just depends on how much material vs air is left in the cup. I leave material in it for a couple of weeks at a time. It's a good idea to swirl the cup and squirt out a couple of sprays every other day but that's not even necessary. The only time I had something start to dry in the cup was after 4 weeks. The paint dried to the inside of the cup but was really easy to get off.
So from somebody who actually has this sprayer, yes I'd recommend it. Especially for the price. You can find a lot more opinions on this sprayer with a decent google search.