If you would consider $3500 for the Pocket NC, consider the Micropronto CNC Micro mill -
http://www.microproto.com/
We have one of these at work. It has bigger travels in every axis (300x150x125mm) bigger than the pocket nC
There are Australian distributors. When we bought it in 2008, it cost about $4000 but that was with a full set of ER16 metric collets. The new ones run on Mach 3 CNC software.
We use it to micro-sample sections of corals, stalagmites and other shell materials prior to lab analysis. These materials are soft and mill very easily.
Any machine like this is not designed to take deep cuts but to take many light cuts. Needs about 1 meter of benchtop on a deep 900mm bench.
joe