Digidesign MBox vs. Tascam US224, battle of the 2 I/O Options

[dbcn]

so what is the better deal here? to set up a small studio on the cheap - I used the Tascam US428 for a while with a condenser mic and a tube amp, combined with ProTools Free, and it was a nice little set up, but then I returned the 428 as PTF can only take in 2 inputs at a time, and I don't have a ton of money to spend on software -

advice? I'm kind of ticked that Digidesign hasn't said anything about getting an OS X version of ProTools out - they don't seem too concerned - Steinberg is coming out with Cubase SX in a couple months and it seems that spending $300 on the Tascam 224 and using SX just to keep up with the operating system is kind of ridiculous, but what's the point in spending the money on ProTools LE 5.2 (comes w/Mbox) if it's going to be outdated in a half a year - AND what's the point in paying $500 for the MBox to have the 2 inputs (that you could use with PTF) and then getting the PT LE which allows for more than 2 inputs?

sooooo confusing....

and is 24 bit/48k so much better than 16/41.1 that it should be an issue? i did find the latency with the 428 kind of annoying, but nothing that couldn't be worked around...


thanks for any input -

danny