P.S. Congrats on taking the plunge. You won't be disappointed. 

Still running PCI here. Whats happening is motherboard makers are leaving out the PCI slots due to all the other available options. I love my Echo LAyla 3G but I know I'll have to change it down the road.

Records and plays. I'll worry about that other stuff later.

57Gregy
Records and plays. I'll worry about that other stuff later.

I'm with you on that one. I am very slowly learning how things work but have not changed a heck of a lot since my Atari and 8 TRack days. I just have more stuff to play with now and it didn't cost 1/16 of what it used to cost.. Ya, and a lot is FREE! 
 
But the beauty of using a full fetured DAW is you can use it at any level you choose. You are not forced to use all those fancy frills and features. If it plays midi and I can record an audio track I'm happy.  Over time I have learned more and more about those fancy features and slowly I adopt them into my workflow.
I now could not live without the new PVR, the Pro Channel, the Audio to midi convertion and my favorite VST collection. And only Cakewalk has those features. Well Cubase is close, but I'd have to buy it, and that's $400 I'd rather spend on Hardware. 

No microwave oven button either. Just set the time and presto a hot cooked song, baked in minutes! :)