Morning Sara! Don't know anything about Ped Basic. sorry *

I have the pe basic and the only thing you can do with it is put design on to use for your machine you cant edit with it and thing like that you need a program that does your editing like embird .

I've got Ped Basic as I have a Brother 190D.

Ped Basic is just that: basic. You can only upload embroidery designs to the card to use in your machine, nothing else. You can not digitise in this programme or combine separate designs. Neither can you save designs on the card to the embroidery files on your computer.

I don't mind as I have Husqvarna 3D Pro and Embird, both programmes that let me do anything I like as far as embroidery is concerned.

I have Ped Basic. It is only for downloading designs to transfer to your machine. On my first embroidery machine - it was the only way to add a design, now, I have a machine that uses it and has a USB port. I don't always have my computer close to my EM and I really like the accessability of the card! So, I use both methods. Hope that helps!

If you have to use a card to transfer designs to your machine you have to have a card writer that is what ped basic is a card writer. You can go with other brands amazing box or ultimate box I think they are all the same basically for me it came down to price and I found my ped basic cheap on ebay, and bought my blank card from Kens sewing.

No you cant edit or create designs with PED-Basic, you also can't convert to or from any other format so your designs need to already be in PES format for the program to read designs and then write them to the card.

We all sound a little off-putting in our answers but I'm really happy with my PED-Basic. I got a card with mine, but this isnt always the case, however to use the reader you need a card :)

It sounds more like you're looking for a digitising program. I have PE-Design (brother product) but its quite expensive. No matter which program you decide on they all have a bit of a learning curve so dont expect to be producing brilliant and flaw-free designs your first few times with your digi program...play with it and see how it works.

A totally free one that comes to mind is Sophie Sew. Totally free and there are tutorials on the same site. Then there's Stitch Era Universal, also free but its adware which means you need to be connected to the internet while you're using it, so that the ads can rotate and change - so I've heard. I havent tried this program but its available for free on several sites you just pay the postage to you as its on cd and depending on your location you might even be able to download it from the site. Other software such as Embird (which is also popular) have trial/demo versions on their site.

Hope this helps you make a decision :)

Dana
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whoops forgot the other two software links for you :)

Dana
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