Most of the complaints about MAME seem to stem from a lack of effort put forth by users to read, configure, or otherwise put effort into their setup.

What do you want for free?

My MAME setup isn't perfect and we've spent only a few hours going through configuring it... granted we're also trying to get Hyperspin going as well... but it's great when things finally get running the way I want them to. Hooray for victories!

Put some effort in and you'll be rewarded.