I ran into this same problem not wanting to spend the money for an upgrade after spending that huge amount for the software in the first place. So, I went to a local used laptop shop and bought a laptop using windows xp and loaded my "old" software on that. I have both Bernina and Viking software and BOTH were telling me I needed to buy new software for windows 7. I would, of course, prefer using my Mac, but I will just put all machine software on the windows xp machine.