I definitely like the Apple Macbook solution. At $1099 from the Apple Store, it's very well priced and you get a very good product. It is not bargain basement pricing, but you can find plenty of Dells and Thinkpads and HPs for that price too. So while you may pay a small premium for an Apple product, it is not grossly over-priced like it was in the 80s and 90s, and I think there is, subject to opinion, some measure of you get what you pay for here.
If you're using Windows XP, then for best audio quality, you'll want to use an ASIO driver for USB streaming audio, something like one of these to avoid the kmixer layer:
http://www.asio4all.com/http://usbaudio.com/Windows Vista has a better audio subsystem than XP, so I'm glad that you mentioned Vista as your target operating system. I would recommend that you get 2GB of RAM with your Windows Vista system, as Vista is notoriously demanding on system resources, especially with respect to memory and graphics. I am not saying that this is what you need, only that this is what I recommend.
USB DACs typically present themselves as USB streaming audio devices, so contrary to what some people say, USB audio is not immune to jitter. That is not to say that it is very jittery, I am only saying it is not immune. The specification for USB 1.0 audio class devices can be found here:
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/audio10.pdfBecause of the streaming nature of these devices, for best audio performance (and peace of mind) I insist that the USB DAC is connected to a USB port which does not share the USB controller with any other peripheral. The more contention on the USB bus, the more likely you'll have jitter and loss, so I try to avoid this problem by isolating the DAC to its own USB bus.
Computer Audiophile wrote about this:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/417The Macbook, for example, has two external USB ports, and one Firewire port. One of the USB ports is shared with the built-in keyboard and mouse/trackpad controller, and the other one stands alone. I also have an external hard disk where I store all of my music --- it has both a USB port and a Firewire port, so I've connected the external drive and the computer via Firewire so that I (yes, there's a theme here) isolate disk access from the USB DAC.
I am not familiar with which Dell laptops have which USB port configurations and which ports are shared with which USB controllers. As in many things, your mileage may vary.
For a remote, on balance, I have not seen a remote as good as the iPod Touch/iPhone as a remote control for iTunes. These two things together present an easy, flexible, and powerful out of the box, comprehensive, seamlessly integrated solution for ripping, managing and playing your music.
There are plenty of other reasons to own an iPod Touch or an iPhone, and if you already have one of these and iTunes installed, and have a wireless (WiFi, 802.11) network at home, if you already have these things, then the software is free. Here's a review:
http://www.macworld.com/article/134453/2008/07/remoteapp.htmlI like the Macbook solution because I don't worry about it. It's easy to configure, it's very flexible, and I know what kind of hardware and software I'm getting. Also, I know it works well. I have nothing against Vista (I used to work on video games for the PC, which may be taken as evidence that I am not biased against the PC industry or Microsoft as that's how I used to make my living), and I think it is a fine solution, but you might (I say might) have to worry a bit more, especially with respect to isolating the USB DAC from other USB devices. My guess is that the Dell laptop you're considering has whatever it is that we want ... even so, it's something that I'm mindful of and you may want to be mindful of it too.
In either case, I expect iTunes and the iTunes remote will work the same way whether that's a PC or a Macintosh, and that the Isabellina will serve equally well, all other things being equal of course.
Wilson
