Suggestions Please, What hardware/software Options

[BobAdamson]

Hello musicmakers,

I have a few questions before I get into the meat of the subject. I am a long time Mac user (][e). My wife has a 17" Powerbook. My kids all have iMacs or Ibooks. The house is wireless. I purchased iLife to play around with GarageBand. Just as I was starting to get into it, my wife complains that she can no longer get on her Mac. See, I have my office at home and unfortunately, MY computer is a Dell. So, to keep the peace (and avoid buying another Mac for now), can anyone suggest something that might work well (I know that is redundant) on Windows?

I am a long time amatuer guitarist/keyboardist/singer/songwriter. My wife is a teacher. What I want is some kind of setup that allows me to record a few back up tracks to accompany live playing. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but I might want to do more than that, who knows? So, any suggestions?

[boilerblues]

I'm just getting starting in the Mac world and so far I'm impressed. I've run PC's for years and am pretty knowledgable about them. You can do music on them, check out Cubase SE or a higher version, there's PC and Mac versions so it would be easy to make the switch. Cakewalk Home Studio is pretty popular for beginning users on PC. There's a lot of options and they do work well if you set them up right. I haven't been on my Mac long enough to really get to know it (I've had it 2 weeks), but so far I'd say that the Mac is set up better as a music platform, but it's certainly possible to do it on PC. Most hardware works on both platforms and a lot of software does too. There's lots of resources for learning about how to set up a PC for music.