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At 1:25 PM -0700 4/10/02, William Mcallister wrote: >Whats the best bang for the buck? I eventually want to use it for >recording and all things musical. I'm a Macintosh partisan and will recommend one. What's your budget? Do you need a portable to take on gigs, or will a desktop model with slots be more to the point? An iBook with an external audio convertor might be adequate. The list price range for an iBook is $1,199 to $1,799. The models with Combo Drives (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) are $1,499 and $1,799, the more expensive having a larger screen. The G4 PowerBook is a lot more powerful and consequently more expensive, with a price range of $2,299 to $3,699. All three models have Combo Drives. The cheapest desktop is the iMac, with a price range of $1,399 through $1,899. The bottom of the line has a CD-RW drive, the mid-price has a Combo Drive, and the top has a SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-R). The iMac has no expansion slots for sound cards, so if you're happy with a USB or FireWire audio interface this could be an ideal model for music production. It's also fairly compact, so it could be taken out on gigs as well. Desktop tower Macs range from $1,599 to $3,849, plus the cost of a monitor. The cheapest one has a CD-RW and the others have SuperDrives. They all have PCI slots for sound and video cards. The top models have dual 1GHz processors, but all of them are fast. Whichever model you decide on, you'll need an audio interface of some kind. There are four types, depending on how you want to connect them to the computer: USB, FireWire, PCMCIA, or PCI. All Mac models have USB and FireWire. The laptop models have PCMCIA and the desktop towers have PCI. Depending on your audio I/O needs you can spend under $50 or over $50,000 on a system. You can get and 8-channel FireWire interface for under $1000 and a 2-channel USB interface for under $500. -- ______________________________________________________________ Richard Zvonar, PhD (818) 788-2202 http://www.zvonar.com http://RZCybernetics.com http://www.cybmotion.com/aliaszone http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?autostart=rz