Not bad =)
Good, ye I guess you are right about the hardware, what is cool nowadays is that you don't have to buy many expensive stuff like samplers synthesizers and such. Ok I'm not sure if they can totally replace them, some piece of hardware have awesome sound
I remember when I connected my keyboard to the comp I had huge latency when I typed, I bought an EMU 0404 soundcard and it dropped to 6-7 ms, in fact like on UrT ping matters so much for "live" playing =) Too bad I don't have the fix comp anymore to have fun with that :/