Quote:

i am intrigued by the garage band program.
that is my 1st draw to the macbook -- since
some of you were curious as to what i wanted
to do with said laptop.



Now we are getting somewhere!

Which instrument are you looking to play with GarageBand? It's true that GarageBand is free, and quite powerful for a free software. If you ever get more serious about recording and tweaking to the limit, then Logic (or any other big boys DAW software) will be needed.

The nice thing about Macs is that there are no driver issues most of the time. The Core programming is fast enough for the amateur music engineer, there are rigs to connect you guitar or bass to the line input, MIDI to USB for keyboards or drums, etc....

On the PC side, if you go there, the best audio drivers are Asio. Reaper is (almost) free, meaning it's in trial mode ... forever.

If you share some more info about what you want to do, then we can help you get the best you can get.

My new venture: http://www.voglosounds.com