The 1010lt hasn't changed in years. I got my first one in probably 2002. My second one in about 2007. I use them both simultaneously for 16 tracks at a time on my single core AMD Athlon 2400 that I built for $500 about 5 years ago.
The only problem is, they're PCI and not PCI Express, so newer motherboards that only have PCIx may present a problem. I think (as far as I can tell) the first usb mixers were basicly just normal mixers that had the stereo output routed through a cheap usb converter built in. More gimic that function in my opinion. Then I think they figured out that those would really be useful if actually routed each channel separately. You just have to read up on them. As far as the Tascam, I don't think I've ever seen a rack mount interface that didn't send separate channels- it was just the (earlier?) mixers that were questionable. But again, read, research.
It's really much more common to use the "mixer" for its preamps in front of an interface, then do your actual mixing inside the computer. If you wanted to mix outside the computer, you could assign each track an output, then route the each track back out to a channel on your mixer(s). IMO, you lose some of the greatest functionality of using a computer this way. I'm sure there are some people who do it though.
I get that impression- someone else from your neck of teh world was looking for studio monitors and the prices she was getting down there was like double too!
