Considering Mbox purchase - a few questions for the experts

[dturner]

Hello all!

I have been using my Digi001 G4/533 system for the last year or so and love it. I am considering purchasing the Mbox for use with my G3/400/320MB laptop.

The short term purpose for the Mbox/G3 combo will be for a vacation coming up in July. During two weeks on the coast in South Carolina, I would like to record the ocean and other environmental sounds in stereo with a couple of AT 4050s, and also set up a little project studio for composing and recording during the evenings. [does this sound like a blast or what?]

For recording the surf I will [obviously] have to rely on the G3's battery for power. Since the Mbox draws it's power from the USB connection, and provides phantom power... so far, so good. But one concern is that I will likely have to use the internal drive for both PTLE and for recording audio data and I have always understood that the app and data should be on separate drives. So... would it be better to partition the drive? Or could I possibly create a startup CD ROM with the mac OS and PTLE, and use the internal HD for audio data?

For the vacation project studio, I will bring along a Korg N5EX, emagic mt4 midi interface, and a few guitars. I will likely purchase a firewire drive for storing data while in the vacation house -- pretty straightforward. One question.... what is the best deal on a firewire drive these days?

The second use for the Mbox/G3 will be [back at home now] to serve as a sample playback module running Kontakt or Halion or Unity DS-1. Any thoughs on which of these apps would be the most flexible and powerful? Are there any potential problems I should be prepared for when using a G3/400 laptop in this way? Can I expect a reasonable amount of polyphony? Any other thoughts or caveats will be appreciated.

Thanks!

Dennis