Congratulations on the new machine.
If your machine has USB connectivity (cable or flash drive), then nothing is needed, except stabilizer, machine embroidery thread and machine embroidery bobbin thread.
If the machine does not have USB connectivity, then PED Basic will be needed for viewing and sending downloaded designs to a memory card.
Stitch out the built-in designs, test the fonts and frames. Save your testing/samples as they sometimes come in handy for future projects.
It is good to have a catalog program. You can download a free trial of Catalog X here - http://www.annthegran.co...earch&ssp=/0/0/1/9/0
Embrilliance Thumbnailer is another program for viewing. http://www.annthegran.co...brilliance%20Thumbnailer
Both provide viewing and CatX includess a bit of editing.
A lot of first time embroidery machine owners want to jump right in to embroidering pictures and creating their own designs. There are many software programs for this, but they are pricey, take a lot of time to learn, still need hand editing and the results are usually not the quality of a professional digitizer.
On the hard drive of your PC or with a removable flash drive, create a folder and name it Embroidery Downloads. This will be the destination for designs you download from the Internet. Downloads are usually zipped/compressed to save download time and have to be opened before sending to the embroidery machine. Highlight the zipped file and you should be prompted by your PC's operating system to unzip or extract the file. The extracted/unzipped file will be the one you will be working with.
If you choose to save your design files on the hard drive, be sure to back them up every time you add or make other changes so you will have a current file should something happen to the PC and files on the hard drive are lost. Insert a flash drive the usb port on the PC and highlight the Embroidery Downloads folder. Select send to removable flash drive. Each time you do this, the new files will overwrite the old files.
Enjoy and have fun.