Loriannh, I wanted to welcome you to the board.
I don't do any machine embroidery myself but I do have a Bernina. I find the website ok, and their video tutorials very good, but at least for my machine, the manual isn't much of a help. I mostly watch videos from them and others when I have an issue.
It is sounding to me like you need more computer than you have, I did a search on "computer requirements bernina artlink 8" and got this about Apple:
https://berninaofamerica.zendesk.com...Apple-products
Bad link/missing info for PC.
edit: Wanted to say, you will still be able to do many wonderful things with your machine even without this program. But if you wanted to digitize your own photos and things, you will need more computing power than you have.