PE Design v.8

Last weekend and this weekend I attend Penny Muncaster-Jewel's classes on PE Design v.8 at Sew Contempo in Clear Lake City.  I also attended the PE Design Club yesterday morning.  Penny is a really good teacher and she crams a whole lot of material into her classes.  I didn't expect to learn so much since I have been using the program for many years, but lately I had been concentrating on the manual digitizing classes given by Sue Lough from the Memories-in-Thread.net website.  I hadn't gone back to look at the rest of the program in years, and so it was a good update on what was new in Design Center.  It is a good way to work with outlines, and then, as Penny suggests, bring the outlines into Layout and Editing to add texture and detail.  Penny also showed Photo Stitch but I'm still not impressed with this part of the program.  It just takes too long to stitch out the photos, and they are so stiff.  The PE Club went over Font Creator and I hadn't looked at that part of the program at all.  Now there is a version 9 but I just cannot see investing the money to upgrade again.  I'll have to wait another version or two before I upgrade as there are no real discounts for just upgrading the program.  There are also two updates to my Quattro machine, but as I sew as a hobby and not a business, the upgrades are too expensive for me and I'm not sure I'd use the new functionality.  I haven't done everything I can do with my machine and program that I have yet.