Clueless Newbie - Powerbook Audio Suitability Options

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Hi,

I'd *really* appreciate some guidance from those who know more than I do (and there must be plenty of you out there!).

A little background. I've got a powerbook 1.5ghz with 1.5gb of ram. It was not bought with recording in mind - it's my work machine.

However, I'm considering letting my wife take it with her on a trip where she'd like to record some of her singer/songwriter tracks.

The sort of stuff she does is a few acoustic guitar tracks plus a vocal and a harmony or two. In a dreamworld she'd love to be able to produce something in the league of Nickel Creek's latest album but her realistic goal would be to produce a CD she'd be proud to sell for 10 bucks at one of her gigs.

We tried the whole "home recording studio" thing with a Korg D1200 and a Joe Meek ThreeQ preamp/compressor with a Studio Projects B1 and an Apex 460 mic. Alas, my wife just doesn't 'click' with the D1200. She finds the whole interface too confusing.

She's looked at GarageBand and she's *much* more comfortable with that interface.

So, here are my questions:

I tried plugging the threeq preamp into the line-in of the powerbook. It sounded good to me (but what do I know?). The threeq is apparently a *really* good single-channel preamp/eq/compressor but I'm wondering whether the powerbook AD conversion is noticably worse than the cheapest firewire AD converter...

So firstly, is a firebox (or similar) the minimum requirement to get a good sound with my powerbook (bearing in mind that the mic and preamp are reasonable)?

Secondly, lugging around the JoeMeek and one of the nice mics on her upcoming trip seems like a bad idea. She's got a little sony condensor mic with 1/8" jack that's got surprisingly good sound quality. It's more than good enough for noodling ideas but it's not suitable for the line-in levels of the powerbook.

I've seen the Griffin iMic advertised but also seen complaints about quality and latency (out of synch by as much as 100ms when putting down additional tracks). I'm not worried about wasting 30 bucks to try it out - I'm worried about discouraging my wife with a tool that she has difficulty controlling.

Is the iMic a bad bet? Is there another portable option to get mic level inputs into the powerbook - without breaking the bank?

Finally, of course I'm not expecting the sort of quality you'd get out of a system that costs thousands of dollars but do those of you in-the-know think it's reasonable to try and produce a "CD you'd be proud to sell for 10 bucks at a gig" with the equipment I've got?

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this.

Regards,
Trevor