Trident,

Regarding your second question, I'm using the notebook version of Audigy 2 ZS (around 115 Euros in Portugal). It uses ASIO 2.0 drivers, I'm sure. I do not know how different are version 1 and 2, but you may find the answer at the Steinberg's site. With these drivers you can choose a latency as low as 2 ms. It works without problems with small size soundfonts, but for piano samples with around 150 MB, I have to select a latency of about 10 ms to obtain a sound of good quality. Still very good and indistinguishable from the lowest latency case, in terms of response to the keys.
I'm sure AJ or Frank will provide you more and better insight.

-- José.