Basic Setup - Recommendations? Options

[Horse Bodotes]

I have been asked to set up a basic midi/recording/editing system for my 13 yo daughter. She has a Yamaha S80 kb, and wants to go to the next step. Although we are a PC house, I am seriously thinking about getting her a used/refurb Power Mac G4 for music. She wants to make and record techno/jazz, and besides the kb she wants inputs for mics, guitar and who knows what else.

Questions: should I get her an mBox, or would I be better off getting a used Digi 001 on eBay. Or something else??? Is Pro Tools LE easy for a (reasonably computer-saavy) 13 yo to use, or will something else be easier.

Unfortunately, I am going to wind up being her IT support, so I want to keep this as simple as possible. But, I want to get her setup so she is happy with the results.
All suggestions/comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

HB

[boze]

i'm gonna get attacked for saying this, but there's no good reason for you to buy a mac to help your daughter make music. not only are they more expensive at every level, but the new osx update is going to mean broken drivers all around for the short term.

don't get me wrong, running osx on a mac is a good way to make music and artsy folks have always been partial to apple hw. but if you're going to be supporting this machine and you understand basic windoze stuff better then i'd say just stick with that.

the mbox is still a nice option, as is the digi001. and hell yes a 13yr old can learn to track audio in any of the daw software big names. it's like anything else with learning a sw program: you know what you want to do and the first time maybe it's a pain in the ass to figure it out but once you have struggled through the basics of setting up your interface, recording audio to a track, and basic editing and mixing you forget that it wasn't second nature.

the main soundcard questions are 1) what are my input/output needs? and 2) how stable are the drivers for this product in my os of choice?

keyboard, mic, and guitar doesn't necessarily add up to three inputs unless they're all being played at once.

i was mac only for years and now i own a vaio laptop in addition to my dual ghz G4 tower and i get way more done on the pc because 1) osx is slow, 2) some of the software and hw i use is not well-supported in osx, and 3) G4s are just not very fast computers for the money compared to what you can get in the windoze world, so it limits the number of effects and virtual instruments you can use. i'm just saying don't sleep on windows for audio, there's nothing wrong with it past image.

maybe the tascam us-428 would be a good fit since it has 4ins, midi, and some basic mixer functionality that could be used to control mixing on-screen.
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let us know how it works out-- i've always been kinda weirded out by how folks like me (i'm 33) can have an entire career based on using one or two pieces of sw. i'm sure that most teenagers could be trained to do what most of the computer ppl i've worked with do without too much fuss. not that there aren't advanced designers and developers with professional training that really matters on some projects- but half the time i'm just telling some random person or a family member or my girlfriend how to do something in photoshop or Word for their work and it's nothing past the level of what a teen could pick up pretty quickly.