Do you plan on digitizing your own designs from scratch? PE Design is really expensive. I think the last time I checked it was around $1200. I wouldn't invest in Viking software for a Brother machine.

You also have the choice of Embird. The basic Embird program is a little over $100, and you can buy plug ins to do what you specifically need. With the main Embird program you can combine designs, resize, recolor, etc. Embird will interface with the Ultimate Box.

How do you get designs to your machine? My Brother is old enough to use a little memory card (thus the need for the reader/writer box), but I think most of the newer ones use either floppy disks or a USB memory stick, and some connect directly to your computer with a USB connection.

My machine is Brother HE-120 which use proprietory memory card.

I just tried EMbird Plus V8.0. There are some neat features in EMbird, and it's maybe the easiest to learn.

I think I will go with EMbird and buy a Ultimate box.

Does anyone know what's the difference between Embird 2006 and Embird Plus V8.0?

Thank you very much!

Does your Brother machine have a USB port? If so, you do not need a card reader/writer box like PED Basic. If you don't have a USB port, then I strongly suggest AGAINST purchasing PED Basic. It is a waste of money and very limited. You will be better off with one of the Amazing Boxes but I don't know the difference in the two.

As for embroidery editing software, PE Design is very expensive. Unless you want to do some serious digitizing, you really don't need it since there are so many other good editing programs for much less money. Embird is one of them. There is another good one called BuzzEdit by BuzzTools. The one that I use is SewWhat-Pro and it is by far the least expensive but can do everything the others do except digitize. I would suggest before you purchase embroidery editing software (which you absolutely will need to do if you want to be able to merge designs, convert formats, resize, rotate, or edit in any way) you should download the trial versions of the software I mentioned above. They all offer 30 day free trials and that way you can find out which one you like the best and which one you find the easiest to use before you make your purchasing decision. You don't want to make a mistake because it is an investment. As I said before I use SewWhat-Pro and I really LOVE it. It is so easy to use and can do just about anything I want to do with my designs. There is also a great SewWhat-Pro Yahoo group you can join that is very helpful. If you ever have a problem, just post and you will get a reply almost immediately! The customer support is fabulous. You can download the free trial of SewWhat-Pro at www.sandscomputing.com or www.stitchesinmotion.ca.
Good luck!
Mary Anne