1) yes, two tracks should be fine.
2) yes, either should be sufficiently fast to record. One of the problems with using laptops to record audio/video is that the hard drives are purposely slow speed.
3) Well, I would suggest also looking into pc card sound cards. USB is all fine and dandy, but it's not really especially suited for audio. Especially when you want to record many traks of very high resolution audio. But you might also look into the tascam 428, which is USB, and may or may not work on your laptop.
Depends on what your current needs are, and any needs you may have/want in the future.

as ljp stated it will work fine. Granted the P3 is right on the edge of the minimum requirements but for stereo recording it will be just fine.
Now, I highly doubt that laptop has USB 2.0 so getting an external USB 2.0 drive won't work. USB 1.1 is slow and USB in general is more CPU intensive than FireWire is. Again, I highly doubt that laptop has FireWire built into so you'll need a PCMCIA card to go to an external drive.
Also remember laptops can be a bit finicky with resources when you start using all of them.
What's your audio input source going to be? In other words what audio card are you going to use?
Opus

my source is going to be a Maudio Quattro which is a 4 in 4 out USB 1.1 gizmo. it wasnt too expensive at $259.

the laptop has two PCMCIA slots and one of them has to be a network card since this computers main purpose is for college. i am planning on either a USB 2.0 or firewire card for an external hard drive, so im wondering if there are more well suited devices out there that use firewire or USB 2.

the MOTU firewire card is way to expensive, i want to keep this under $300 for the card.

thank you,
mike

I would go for a FireWire solution if I were you. PCMCIA firewire card and a drive...all good to go from there man!
Cheers
Opus

opus -

which firewire sound card would you rec? is there a relatively inexpensive one out there?

i know about the MOTU one, which is overkill for me, but i havent seen any others.

thanks,
mike

Oh..I was talking about a FireWire add on for an external drive not a sound card.
I thought you were going to use the MAudio USB device? Which I'm sure will work fine. Also the Tascam US428 as ljp mentioned is great as well.
The only other FireWire device is the Presonus FireStation but that's mLan Yamaha and the performance is ok, not that great IMHO due to the Yamaha drivers. Not fun to work with but very flexible in the long run
HTH
Opus

thanks opus.

i have had one hell of a time getting the USB device configured correctly on my computer, and still no success. i spent a good deal of time on the phone with midiman yesterday on it too. im trying again right now.

also, can the USB device like the Quattro act as Window's main playback device??

thanks,
mike

i do live recording with my toshiba portege pII 366mhz. the internal disc is 6gb "large" and is devidet into the system partition and the data partition. i use the edirol ua5 with asio drivers. the edirol is comparable to your maudio.

doing classical 2tracks and using the system sometimes for playbacking direct out of the sequencer for live things, the system works great and with no hickups.

but i had to do a fresh install of win 98se, tweacking the hell out of it (have a look at opus' site: http://www.opusaudioprojects.net/Articles.htm )

make shure the harddrive is everytime well defragmented.

use the lan-card to mirror the disc to your pc, so you always have enough space even with your 10gb disc.

brandy