I guess I’m not the only one out there helping a loved one with an embroidery machine. According to Linus’ blog, his wife Tove received a Brother embroidery machine for Christmas and they went through the same thing I did trying to find decent software, or at least documentation, for PES files.
While Linus didn’t say he used it directly, he did gave a mention of Embroidery Reader and a link to my site. Sweet!