I bought a 9k pound tmax winch. It seems to be built well - it is manufactured in China, but my understanding is that they've been used in Australia for years and the Aussie company does the quality control. It was less expensive than a Warn, more than that harbor freight junk.. ~$500 shipped, I'd guess.

The stock alternator on my 81 is 60amps. I compensate by using an oversized battery 850CA, I believe... Nothing is going to save you if you have to do a bunch of pulls as the winch can peak out at 450A draw.

I'm adding a 2nd tmax in back, probably a 6.5k winch - going to do dual batteries.. Again, just a fat battery in back with a switchable isolator.

how is it holdin up on big pulls?

ANSWER ON LINE SPEED
you look at the load speed, almost 2x as fast, pulling 8 feet with one in one min. that is along time to watch a winch pull.
now lets do a 20 or 30 foot pull like I did last week end. it seems to be for ever. 3 to 5 min laying on the button pulling.
ok now lets add that 10 feet between you when you stoped. 10 more extra feet for the buddy that pulled the cable out. that is 50 feet so about 7 minutes of winding winch cable.
Now lets add in a pull that is not strait. so you pull out 70 to 90 feet of cable and spend a full 10 minutes.
now remember ontop of this you winch up the 10 feet of slack. you can lay that out nice on the drum. now the next 30 feet of pulling you have no controll of how that winds up on the drum.
so you have to pull it back out when you are done.
so add in that 30 feet of rewinding. you can spend 20 to 30 minutes with a slow winch, just to winch a guy 20 to 30 feet. I have a mile marker, strong, holding up well, I use it about 2 times a week. some times when leading a group of 5 or so trucks, I will use it 2 or 3 times a day. (I like watching/ teaching new people about wheeling)
laying on that button for the time it takes for the final pull out and respool 10 to 15 min after the guy is out, just sucks.
I was like you, for myself, I was just happy to see the truck move, first winch I ever owned. for myself I don't need it very often, (high centered) mud stuff like that.
so don't look so much at the load speed, but look at the no load (rewind) speed.
I get so sick of rewinding my winch that sometimes when I know that I will need it again that day I just do the figure 8 wrap around the front grill guard winch mount.
I hate that, I always worry about the cable falling lose and running over it.
How ever, slow line speed gives alot of control. I was intimidated by how fast the warn winch was on rewind. I hit reverse when the hook was getting close to the fair lead to stop it. ended up with the back and forth thing trying to get it tight, but not pulling the hook through the roller fair lead.
wheeeph.. hope that made sence. my next winch will be a warn or simular and the MM will go under the truck in the rear.

Honestly, I haven't done any big pulls with it yet..