Bee, you don't say why you want to record and that makes a big difference. If you desire pro sounding disks for sale you want, of course a top quality mike, soundcards, and good editing software. However if you just want to make music files to practice or rehearse you can get by much cheaper. The Audacity program is free for downloading and it is simple to use. On home computers the speakers are often crap, but you already have that covered. With a cheap mike you can make it sound pretty good for practice. Audacity records in wave format which can easily be converted to mp3's.