Yes Mary, you are reading right. There are several softwares that allow you to download free or purchased designs from the internet to your computer. Then you transfer from computer to the 'cardwriting box/card' for using in your machine. The most popular is the Brother PED Basic that I mentioned above. It only writes .pes format, which is what the 270 uses, and can be bought...sometimes used, from ebay. Normally, you can find new there, as well as Walmart on line, Allbrands.com, and other sites. You may pay from $50to $100+. Then you can download a free software to change other design formats to .pes for your machine to use. There are many many free designs available and a good place to start is to join Sewforum.com. It is a forum for embroiderers, where you can ask questions, request someone create a design for you free or for fee. It is not very active now as the site is also on Facebook, but still, there are thousands of free designs still there. I hope I have explained-helped you. Good luck!

Thanks for the info Isbellpro, but unfortunately that didn't help. We have found a way to make it work. Select the samllest hoop size (100 x 100) and then load the desired patterns. Write the patterns to the card and then use the card in the embroidery machine (Brother PR190D in our case). If a larger hoop size is used (say 130 x 180 which we have) then the process does not work and we get the message "This card cannot work. Turn off power and change to embroidery card. " I assume the real problem, in our case at least, is that the pattern is enlarged by the PED-Basic software depending on the hoop size specified, and that the pattern becomes too big to load into the machine OR the PED Basic s/w genertes erors in the pattern file for a 130 x 180 hoop size. So... we are now going fine. It would be really nice if Brother would 1) acknowlwdge this problem, 2) put information in the brother web site FAQs about it and how to work around. 3) put a meaningful error message on the embroidery machine 4) fix the PED Basic s/w Let's see what happens.

YES! The best suggestion is PE Design Basic..has the reader/writer box & card that you can use over & again....can view the design images on your computer. You can shop for the best price at Walmart on line, Amazon, Allbrands, ebay---lots of possibles--and it should cost in the neighborhood of $100. Little more or little less, just shop around. It is the best! I have it, my friend uses it with her 8500--it only writes .pes designs, but you should D/L a free format converter so you can change other design formats to .pes. Sometimes you want a design that does not come in your format. Good luck and ENJOY!

For an 8mp camera, I finally got a 2gb card and shoot RAW, you don't need quite as large a card for JPG. Still, at events, I sometimes do shoot in JPG and was filling a 1gb card in 1/2 hour, the 2gb card filled up in about an hour doing some street shots and a parade in RAW. It's best to set the camera to the finest quality possible unless they are shots where you need a whole lot but the quality isn't critical. You can't ever get lost quality back on your important shots. Then there are the bigger cards. The reason I don't want to get into larger sizes is that if the card gets corrupted, you lose more photos, plus they are a lot more expensive. I have had good luck with my Kingston cards which were cheap and slower, now I have one Sandisk Ultra II, both seem to be pretty reliable. There was trouble with some brands. Those things are so tiny, it would be so easy to lose the extra ones. I need a better plan to try to avoid that. Be sure to order the right card for the cam. They either take CompactFlash or SD (or proprietary memory sticks), and it would be easy to make a mistake on that.