I hope to be shopping for a mill/drill before too long (gotta bribe
SWMBO w/ a new washer/dryer set immediately beforehand, though!) and have
been struggling with a few things.
I have been looking at the small vertical mill that HF and Grizzly sell,
but am kinda short on space out in the garage/shop, but the price isn't too
bad, though the tooling will be almost as much, I'm sure. There are a few
more expensive mill/drills out there and I wanted to get an idea of any
useful differences between them.

Still trying to figure out if a square column or a round one is better.
I know that a round column requires realignment every time you move the
head, but what are the other main issues?

The price differences between many of the models leaves me a bit fuddled
(this is new territory to me, not having owned any machinery like this
before) and I'm looking for the most bang for my buck, and the similarities
between all the imports in my price range makes it hard to figure out what
should be most important to me.

My uses will mostly be small projects, a lot of aluminum, and automotive
things, but nothing too incredibly big. Of course, once you give a woman a
purse right away it's never big enough, and the same thing with men and
tools....