There are lots of yahoo groups, the consensus seems to be 75/11 embroidery sharp needles are the most common used excepts for knits where you want an embroidery ball point needle. You tube has a couple tutes but not many. Brothers take pes designs so you should be able to use those and connect to you computer. As for software I'm not sure you need any unless you are altering designs. If you use brother cards you will need a card reader which amazon sells for about 100 and it comes with very basic software. I just got mine and haven't had lessons yet so I'm not of much help