Quote Originally Posted by A.P.
I should of said, the laptop will be for playing live more than anything.
Any suggestions on sound cards will be of great help too


Cheers ;)
my original answer was based on the fact that you _said_ PC
PCs can (with a lot of tlc) be totally reliable machines and if it's what you want, fine
but i personally would buy a mac. and if what you mainly want it for is playing live, i would *definitely* buy a mac.

sound cards: there's ninety gerbillion threads about this. but what do you want it to do? if you're playing live and you only need a stereo out, the built-in card on a mac is actually very capable. or you could go echo indigo (provided you have pcmcia). then there are several m-audio etc cards that are small I/O but very capable firewire cards. if you need a lot of I/O the motu traveller and 828 are great. top of the heap is probably RME.