Meh. It's $61 at Maplin, $70 at B&H. Clearly this dinosaur has been discontinued. You'll probably be able to score one for $19.95 at geeks.com in a couple of months.
I had a 1010LT and the drivers kind of sucked. I'd like to think that M-Audio did a better job with the 2496 but I kind of doubt it.
In the 5 or so years that I have been inflicting myself upon various forums I have only read of a tiny, tiny fraction of people that have had driver/PC issues with M-Audio products. Indeed, they have been one of the very few interface people who have had drivers ready and waiting for a new OS.
There was a guy at Studio-Central that had some problems and swore off M-As but when you consider that the 2496 and
the Fast track pro have probably outsold every other soundcard and AI COMBINED on the planet the incidence of failure is practrically zero. (compare this to the total mayhem Fussywire caused when it was first used for audio? )
SoundBlaster cards are probably the next most common re fit but are complete trash for any serious recording work.
My two 2496's have worked flawlessly in a P4 XP home, AMD dual core XPpro, HP dual core 2.7G Win 7/64 bit AND! A P4 with Windows Media Centre which is SAID to be unsupported! (I just ran XPPro drivers. Bish-bosh)
The Fast track pro worked in all the above as well as an i3 HP W7/64 lappy and an HP 850mHz laptop with 1/2G ram.
I will agree about one thing, the cards have had their day which is why they are being flogged off cheap so if you don't have an old PC handy don't buy one, but FFS! They have lasted bloody well!
I think M-A were stupid not to develop a decent PCIe card or two. The AP192 and maybe a 1010lt type with ADAT?
Dave.