I have the janome 9700 all you need is a card reader for the computer that can take the compact flash card and a PCMCIA adapter for the sewing machine.
as long as the embroidery design is in jef format you can just copy it to the flash card making sure it goes into the folder called Embf5 on the card. You dont need to use customiser at all ..
there are a couple of good freebie programs out there to convert your designs if they arent in jef. One is trusizer
http://www.wilcom.com.au/PRODUCTS/TrueSizer.aspx
feel free to ask me any other questions ... gotta love my janome :)