Avoid the integrated (built-in) sound as they're mostly adequate for playback not mixing and recording, and they're built into the system board (mother board) and not separately replaceable if they fail.
I've achieved good results recording vinyls and tapes with the SoundBlaster Live card I ordered in my Dell. Others have written positively here about the Sound Blaster Audigy card(s); you might search the archives for "sound card".
Songs stored in WAV format require on the order of 10 MB per minute, or about 300 MB per 10-song CD; you can burn about 22 tunes on a single CD. I'd get at least a 40 GB hard drive, depending on what you want to do with recorded music; you can easily double that to 8GB for a reasonable price these days.
If you're going with an Intel based PC, I'd examine the top level of technology and then back off 1 or 2 levels from their, depending on your budget. I've only bought Dell computers the past 7 years and can never bring myself to pay for their latest and greatest; I always seem to buy one level down and not the fastest processor speed at that.
Someone else can tell you about Macs. I loved the one I had but that was many years ago.
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HagFan
[This message was edited by Ron Page on 25 August 2003 at 07:05 AM.]
