Orient,
what you won't like about the QY products is the fact that you don't have things like sync. start and you don't have dedicated buttons to push like fill ins and endings. The QY's are mostly to record one man band songs and although there is a fingered chord mode, these boxes are not designed to be an arranger keyboard first as the i series and other modules are. First, the QY100 and QY700 are sequencers and the rest of the features are add ons.
I would like to suggest a few other arranger modules for you if you like the i30 Korg. You are right when you say the i40m can't record styles. Only if you load them in from floppy disks made on the i30 can you put user styles in the i40m. If you have an i30 and would like to load styles made in here into the i40m then you might decide to get the i40m although these i series products have been discontinued here in the USA. I don't know if they are still available around the world. I still have one i40m left in my store. It is the only Korg i series left.
The other two products I would recommend are the generalmusic WK2 arranger module or the Solton X4 module. Both are user programmable for the styles, and the WK2 arranger has a hard drive, a floppy drive and a vocal harmonizer and guitar effects processor built in. The selling price of this module is $1095.00. The only negative of this module would be that you can only record songs with two melody tracks and the accomp. style track. You can play back 16 track SMF files but you can't record a 16 track song. However, in it's price range this is a great module. The Solton X4 on the other hand sells for around $2000.00 but offers much more features. 16 track recording and it will hold up to 200 user styles. The WK2 arranger can hold 8 user styles. The X4 can be purchased with a hard drive and a vocal harmonizer but at an extra charge. I would suggest both of these other modules to you if you want quality styles and user recording of styles. You can get EMC styleworks software for either of these two keyboards if you want to convert Korg styles to Solton or Generalmusic. Fran Carango sells this software.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, Ca.