It is supposed to be a lot less expensive and easy to use and there is a lot of free help and tutorials on the web. Alot of people here and on other sites love Embird. I don't do anything more than convert formats right now, so I just use the free Wilcom Trusizer for that. If you want to digitize or change designs, you will need software. You can get the USB sticks all over for about $10 or even less for the smaller sizes that will be plenty big for what you need.
Your manual should tell you if you have to format it in some particular way, but it is not difficult at all. You can just copy files to your computer, unzip if needed and copy to the USB stick(flash drive).
I think you machine has a USB port, so if you are just downloading designs to transfer to your machine, you don't need any software more that what Windows includes. Of course I might be totally off-track here, and you were asking about transferring designs using PED Basic lol. And maybe video instructions on youtube, tho I've never looked :) If you're serious about learning to digitise then there are yahoo groups who teach. However once you know where each tool is and what it does, THEN you can start to play (this goes for any digi program of course). For me it was quite steep as the manual assumes you know what they're talking about when they say to "go into manual punch mode" for example.yes, my book got a lot of blank stares lol. No matter which program you choose for learning to digitise, there will be a learning curve. Yes, others prefer Embird, its a matter of personal opinion. I prefer PE Design over Embird for digitising. If you're asking about digitising then I think your question was really about PE-Design. (My machine is a card reader so no other way to transfer designs eg no usb.) I got mine on ebay for the same $119.waaay cheaper than here in Australia. However, after all that, I'm in no way disappointed with my PED Basic. I'm wondering if you're asking about digitising or transferring designs.? Do you realise that PED Basic is a transfer program with a card writer? (For transferring pes designs onto a card then to your machine.) It doesnt convert, and it doesnt read the cards, only writes to.it can resize some designs that you're about to transfer to the card, but you cant save that resized design in your computer.