Purchase and Installation

In order to purchase Stitch Era, I needed to find a dealer that sold it! A quick search online produced only two sources that I could find: allbrands and Digitizer's Friend. Both offer the software at the same price so I went with Digitizer's Friend (it's always nice to support a small business). The current promotion is described on the Stitch Era web page.

Once I made the purchase, the software arrived via Priority Mail within a few days and I received an email from Sierra Technology. Like most digitizing software, the product requires the use of a security dongle. The dongle has a serial number on it. Once you purchase Stitch Era, you email the serial number back to Sierra Technology. They send you back a PDF with your "W" code on it. You log on to their website with your dongle serial number and your W code to download your password file. Once you have the password file, you can install the software! And then if you don't think that's enough, you still have to activate the software which is done over the internet while the application is running.

But though this may seem like a lot of work just to get the software installed and running, it did go smoothly and the software is up and running on my Windows XP IBM Thinkpad T40(?).

And before I go on, I'll mention a couple of things: (1) you can install the software on up to 3 machines, but you need the dongle to run it - so you can only run the software on one machine at a time and (2) if you end up wanting to install/run the software on an additional machine, you'll need to deactivate the software on one of your prior 3 machines. I'm trying the software on my older IBM Thinkpad. This machine does not quite meet the suggested minimum requirements for the software - it's too slow and the display is too small, but so far it's working just fine.

What's in the Box

The Stitch Era box contained one CD containing the software, one CD containing training videos, one dongle, and a printed manual. The software version on the CD is v9.10. The latest version is 9.20. When you actually run Stitch Era, the program will let you know that a newer version is available and you can initiate the upgrade process through the software itself. I went ahead and did this.

Thankfully, you get a printed manual! When I purchased PE Design v7, all I received was a PDF of the manual which I then paid to have printed. So thank you Sierra Technology for giving us a printed manual - there's nothing like having the documentation sitting in front of you on your desk. However, I already have two complaints about the manual: (1) it doesn't have an index and (2) the English translation is not quite perfect. As I start learning how to use this product, I'll no doubt have some other comments to make about the documentation.

Oddly, the video training CD also requires a password file to install! This is not the same password file as the one you downloaded to install the software. I emailed product support about this missing password file and they emailed the file to me. It would've been nice if the need for a 2nd password file had been mentioned somewhere!

Lastly, for now, if you read the description of the current promotion on the Stitch Era website, you'll see that you are to receive "Bonus Packs 1, 2, and 3". But nowhere is it described exactly what's in these Bonus Packs! I assume that I now have these, but have no idea what they really are! Sure would be nice to know.

So that's it for now. I did not fair so well yesterday trying to figure out the software on my own without really reading the manual so I'm going to begin watching the training videos which are, by the way, without sound!