Midi trigger?

[Cliff]

I'm really clueless when it comes to MIDI so I was wondering if someone could help me out a little. A little while back I decided I wanted to add drums to my mixes and opted for a Yamaha DD-50 digital drumpad over a drum machine because I wanted to teach myself how to play. Well I've since kind of gotten over that and have put more focus on playing the guitar and singing and was thinking about selling the drumpad and getting some software like fruityloops. Before I did that I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to find decent sounding samples. I did find some and then I started thinking that maybe I could use the drumpad to trigger these sounds through my computer. If that would work, I would be more likely to hang on to the pads because part of the reason I want to sell them is poor recording sound quality. Anyway, what I'm wondering is, if I hooked up the midi connectors of the drumpad to my soundcard, could I use its pads to trigger the sounds on my computer? I understand telling me how to do this would probably be too much of a hassle so I just want to know if it is possible and what format the samples would have to be in.