I've had a brief experience with the US122 I was setting up for a friend. I would recommend staying away from this unit, or any other USB audio device. Opt for something in a similar price range thats based on a PCI card, I've been using a M-audio Delta 66 with the Omni I/O breakout box for about 3 or 4 years now and havn't had any problems with performance or nothing (other than blowing the xlr mic ins by hot plugging a mic with the phantom power on, my fault) I think this is a great unit for someone starting out. It has mic/guitar inputs with decent pre's, 2 line inputs, 4 outs, FX send/Return, Rec Outs. Its more than capable for someone just starting out and gives you room to learn and and grow into the unit........you may outgrow it in a few years, but your going to learn alot about signal routing and various setup options while you are learning piece. Plus they can be had on ebay for about 150-200$$$ Give it a look....

tascam

I bought the us-122 as an open box for $179.

I have laptops (dell 1.7Ghz centrino/1 gig ram and an ibook g4 new)

I installed the tascam drivers on my dell and the laptop went belly up. I am very experienced with drivers/installs etc and I will admit my laptop had a lot of junk on it. I had to rebuild the laptop and have yet to test the drivers (yes latest and greatest) to see if it crashes again.

Loaded drivers on Ibook , worked perfectly.

I plug my line-6 30 watt amp line out into the tascam unit and it works great. I have no complaints on the MAC side of things with this unit. I guess it depends on what you are going to use it for. I can't turn phantom power on without it killing the USB hub on the windows machine, I have yet to try it on my wifes Ibook...(well you can see why right?) I have a mac-mini coming in that im going to use for some fun home recording so we'll see how the tascam works with that. There are tons of options out there ..if you have the cash I would probably go firewire if you can.