I confess, I'm too lazy to do the research; do the Deeres have shaft driven snow blowers? If these don't, which do? I think I'm about to be in the market for one.
I have a 48" Z425 (zero turn) rider I bought used which works well for mowing on my small lot. A bit of overkill for my lawn but my wife is very understanding, especially if I take my time and slowly build up to getting something I want but don't really require. But the zero turn is obviously not of use for snow blowing.
My Sears 8.5 HP blower doesn't like to run and its warranty is up this spring. Sears has been out about four times to fix it but can't find the problem, i.e., why it stalls out. Once I left about six inches of snow in the driveway until the technician could come out and watch me blow. When it stalled he replaced the carb (which has no air cleaner.) No change. It probably is the electronics but the techs don't think so. I try to keep the snow I blow from blowing on the blower but that doesn't seem to matter. Fortunately it is electric start or my shoulder would about fall off from trying to start it. One of those intermittent things that is hard to diagnose.
My previous blower was mounted on an old Coast to Coast rider. It was belt driven which didn't work all that well. Way, way too many belt problems. But I really like the rider for snow removal. I would prefer an older (i.e., cheaper) model because I won't use it for anything but blowing snow. My brother has a Bobcat skid steer with a snow blower which he uses on his couple hundred yard long drive. $35k. He has a small horse farm so the snow blower was just another attachment. I would like to get by spending, oh, about $2k.