One more to add in the "build your own" category.
If you plan on going to Best Buy to buy a pre-made computer, you better know what the hell you need from your computer and exactly what kind of components and software you want, because I can tell you that finding a retail employee that knows the requirements of using a pc for audio recording is just short of impossible. You are not going to get the quality you need by just blindly walking into the store and saying "I need a computer for music". I know from experience. Retail computers, with all the proprietary software, bells and whistles, are NOT designed for any heavy usage. They are web surfing, email, photoshop scrapbook machines. We've gone through three store packaged computers that were used extensively for games before we wisened up and chose a place that let us put together the machine ourselves. We simply took a gaming pc magazine, checked the recommended specs of high flying gaming computers, and applied them to an online store that put the machine together and QC'd it. We saved $1000 in parts, and the machine has yet to burp, sneeze, or fart. And that's just gaming. Audio is a separate beast entirely.
Not only that, but you can also find warranty deals and customer service from custom shops that surpass Dell, HP, and all those other bozos. You do not want to be stuck in the middle of an intense recording project at 2am and on the phone either finding out that tech support is only open during regular business hours, or speaking with some tech idiot with an attitude who can't help you unless you have them charge $30/hour to your credit card to try and fix a problem that may not even be fixable over the phone. Oh, and did I mention the call is not even toll free?
Worst case scenario at a custom shop could be finding out from someone on a toll free line that you have to replace some hardware, which will be reasonable cheap because your pc was put together in a way that makes DIY replacement a snap.
Cy
