I'm going to college, and i'm thinking of switching from desktop to laptop in order to conserve space. I have a Kurzweil K2600, and I want to make sure i have a midi connection as well as a quarter inch jack, and hopefully quarter inch outs for speakers or headphones. I'm told USB is bad for me, but i wasn't told why. Any suggestions?

If you switch to laptop, you simply narrow your choices. MAudio makes something good for a laptop and other companies do too. Check any issue of Electronic Musician or Home Recordist or others.

USB is not good because it is not efficient and it is a major cause of pops and clicks in recording. Having said this, many many musicians have used USB very successfully. Try it, if it worked for you, go for it.

I have researched this a bit and there could be USB compatiblity issues depending on your laptop if you are doing digital recording in addition to MIDI over USB. Still researching, but a good question for any USB MIDI product vendor is what USB controllers / controller flavors are supported. Then check this with what you have using, for instance, Device Manager in Windows. I have found that some vendors may support a family, but not all flavors (i.e. Intel 81802 family.) I have not heard of any issues if using USB for MIDI only.

Goto the MAudio site to check out their "Quattto".
[url=Http://www.midiman.net][url=Http://www.midiman.net][url=Http://www.midiman.net]Http://www.midiman.net[/url][/url][/url]

peace...

spin