Total N00b

Do you know anyone who uses this computer model and has it working for them with Sonar?  The answer to that will determine if it's a good choice.  Alternatively, you might want to consider a computer made by a company that focuses on assembling computers for music.  The following link is a good place to start:

http://www.cakewalk.com/PCResource/

As for sound card, you want to purchase something with an ASIO driver, preferably not a Sound Blaster card.  Look at M-Audio and Presonus to start.  The sound card can be connected via USB, Firewire, PCI or PCIe. 

A lot of sound cards have built in MIDI I/O, so you can kill two birds with one stone by choosing the right sound card.

You can start by using your home stereo system to listen to what you've recorded, but at some point, depending on your stereo system, you'll probably want to invest in some good sounding speakers so that your mixes that you hear on your studio speakers sounds similar to what you hear in your car stereo.

Hope this helps.

Thanks guys!

Unfortunately because I do know so little, I don't have a good feel for what I will need... other than I know I want to hook up my Alesis QS8.1 and at some point I would need to add some vocals but at this point I have no plans to have any other instruments involved... my _assumption_ here is that I will be able to get most everything I need either from the QS8.1 or from Sonar.

While I can see the importance of a proper workspace set up and such, my other assumption is that since almost all of the inputs are direct connections (cables for the synth, software for the rest) that I could get by with my stereo for playing things back, or am I completely off-base here as well?

Granted my home stereo is nothing special either... just a Yamaha reciever thats a couple years old.

I may wait a while to try to get a better understanding before I pull the trigger, but frankly most of the posts that I read here it seems like everyone assumes that everyone is pretty well-versed in all of the technology, making it difficult for a complete n00b like me to understand (at least without doing more research on the terms and brands being mentioned).

Thanks again, I appreciate you both taking the time to address my questions!

~Dante

1 gig of ram??..are you sure??

Hi Dante, Welcome!!
You should shoot an email to Jim Roseberry (an expert in building DAWs) and get his advice. He's built systems for quite a few people here and comes highly recommended.  jim@studiocat.com
He's a nice guy too.