Saturday, January 7, 2012

Stoked and FRUSTRATED

Yes, that was a frustrated all in caps.  Can you imagine.....me yelling?  NEVER!!!  lol  Just kidding.  All joking aside, I made the sale of a lifetime last night.  First let me start with, I made the best chili I have ever made yesterday and our annual tradition of our friends, the Miller's coming over for the first big pot of the new year went off without a hitch.  Jen and I decided to take a little road trip over to Hancock's and see if we could look at some embroidery machines.....cheap, easy to use, did I mention cheap?  Yeah well that was the plan but we got there and then lady at the Bernina counter was well, shall we just say, she was new, very, very new and suggested we come back tomorrow.  She even went a little further and told us to come after 2pm because the morning girl was "new" also....ok then!  On our way out the door, I had a sudden thought (aka "brain fart") that we should just go and take a gander at the machines being sold by Hancock and not just Bernina.  Well low and behold there was a machine and it was actually a Bernette by Bernina.  There was a tag on it marking it from $599.00 to $399.00.  You can imagine my surprise and my thought of cha ching, this might be our lucky night.  Well my buddy Jack went back and looked for us to see if they had a unit available and he came back with good and bad news.  The bad news was that the floor model was the only unit available, the good news was that it was 90% off.....WHAAAATTTT?  Yeah, my thought exactly......$59.00 for an embroidery machine....SOLD, ring it up.  Wait, not so fast, check for all parts....check.  Check for hoop.....check check.  How about software.....nope, nothing there and it says it is optional.  OK, now I am a computer geek and love a good challenge but this one is getting me.  It calls for use of eXplorations Lite software and the machine is the Bernette H79 for Bernina.   I have been searching the internet for 24 hours now and nothing.  I went and visited the Bernina lady today (yes after 2pm thank you very much) and she was extremely helpful but I am still without software and without a way to get images into the machine.  FYI, the machine was a usb port but it is the fat end of the usb if that makes sense and not like I can stick just a normal memory stick in there.  Also, the manual says that the machine's internal memory holds up to 99 designs (40 are pre-loaded).  How do I get the other designs there?  If anyone knows what I am talking about, I would be happy to load pics.

If anyone knows anything about this embroidery machine, please contact me and I will be forever in your debt.

Until next time,

Mamalou

4 comments:

  1. I received one for Christmas and Having the same problem.... This SUCKS!!! I think I may return it!

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  2. I bought this today for the $59 price. I've finally resorted to just going through the internal designs one at a time to see what they look like. I didn't get a card or anything explaining what the internal designs are. And I did some research on the software - looks to be pretty expensive. Have you had any better luck?

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  3. Hi Stephani....I ended up selling the machine because I was unable to get the thing to hook up to my computer to do what I really wanted it to do. I contacted Bernina and they said that the "Lite" program that is mentioned in the book is no longer available so I was just kind of stuck with the internal designs. I understand that there are cards floating around that you can buy for it but they are limited to the designs on the cards. You might try Sew for Less.com and see if they have compatible cards. I found a wonderful older lady that just wanted to play with it and is not computer savvy so the machine was perfect for her. Also,I checked Ebay and they are selling for around $200 so you may go that route if you want to sell the machine and find one that works better for you. I ended up purchasing a Janome Memory Craft 11000 from a local sewing store (used) and it is a dream!!! Cost was MUCH, MUCH higher but the options are endless!! Good luck.

    Lisa

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  4. I have the 800 dollar Explorations software on my computer that came with a Bernette 340 but this H79 won't recognize the software. The computer needs to download the divice driver which doesn't seem to exist online so it must be in the discontincued software. Without the driver, the software doesn't recognize that there is a machine connected.

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