the guy will eventually want to move up from audacity. tell him to go with reaper and pay the $40 when it's available. one thing i like about reaper is that you can setup your sound card and just start recording without wading thru a bunch of crap. all the extras are there if you need them but they aren't in the way otherwise. this is a no brainer. reaper!
if the guy is seriously broke as a joke, he can use the 0.xx versions of reaper for free forever:
http://reaper.fm/download-old-0x.php (which probably still smoke audacity).
oh, tell him that using the mic input of a computer sound card will sound like crap.