You won't have to use embroidery cards--I rarely use them in mine. I do use the 3 1/2 inch floppies a lot, though. If you don't have a floppy drive in your computer you can get one that will plug into a USB port and work just fine. You can buy designs from any designer, as long as you use your format, and unzip them and save them to your floppy disc. I do recommend you don't save a lot of unzipped designs at one time--it takes longer for the machine to read the disc, and don't save any unzipped files to it. If I can help you in any way, please PM me. I have an older Brother 2002D that still works just fine and uses the cards and floppies. Right now, I have no desire or need to upgrade.