A word of advice... people with these new-fangled 'Home Studio' machines tend to let the bells and whistles go to their heads (not including George P in this, his stuff is excellent!).

The art of using such a machine is to be subtle with the effects - don't overdo compression, reverb or any fancy effects, because the results sound 'muddy'.

Most important of all, record 'clean' and add your effects afterwards... you can saw a plank short, but you can't cut it long!!

Okay, when you hear it for the first time you are impressed by the trickery - but your customers are going to be more critical!!

I learned my recording skills on a four track open reel machine (Teac 3440) which had no effects whatsoever, and I still prefer the simplicity of that approach. Nowadays I use a Tascam 788 with an 80Gb HDD (I think you meant 40Gb, not Mb, George?!). It has 6 concurrent inputs, 4 mic and 2 line, and 250 virtual tracks to go at. Track bouncing is a doddle, and totally 'clean' (no losses). Loads of fancy effects, too...

Tascam (the Pro-Audio Division of Teac) made the mistake of not including phantom on the mic inputs (balanced TRS jacks, not XLRs, too!), but I have a couple of EMO mains phantom units to power my Behringer B-2 Pro microphones - these microphones are excellent quality for the money! Not quite in Neumann's league, but a tenth of the price!