<p>The H2 is an incredible piece of gear (and it can take an external microphone,as can the H4). I can’t say enough about the recording quality of the microphone, it has multiple condensor mikes built in, and can record either surround (back/front) or one direction with a selected angle of recording. It records on mini SD cards and can record in varying forms of MP3 or in full wav format. You can also plug a USB cable into it and download it to a computer. </p>
<p>You can also get a decent USB microphone and plug that into a USB port, but I personally would recommend the H2. For the price of a good quality microphone you are getting the recording capability plus really decent microphone capability (you can use the device as a USB microphone without local recording). Put it this way, I have recorded, ahem, some concerts sureptitiously, and the quality came out better then the ‘official’ recording in some cases. It is great for recording lessons, recording performances and being that the recording can easily be transferred, it can be stored in a variety of ways. </p>
<p>Garage Band can do a decent job, there are also several reasonably priced recording programs you can use to manipulate the recording and then create a CD or whatever. My son uses Nero and likes it a lot, but there are plenty of others.</p>