On Mon, 2013-02-11 at 09:44 -0500, drew Roberts wrote: Maybe, but I don't think so. The clueless person always will experience strange behaviour of a computer, something similar to "I'm using foo for around a year now, but since last week there always opens a window and ask me to report a bug, but I never experienced a bug". This does cause fear, if the LEDs of a stand alone device start to flash and they'll stop after a slap, it does cause some worries, but not fear. The difference is, that the computer user guesses that he made a mistake, that makes the software unstable, while the stand alone device user is without doubts, he simply thinks that the gear is broken, but not regarding to a faulty operation. Btw. I own different stand alone devices, most are much better to use than a computer, but they were much more expensive too and they are old, but some stand alone devices are much harder to use than a computer, I've got a 19" device from Behringer, that isn't that old, but OTOH wasn't expensive, however, I know one musician who does buy cheap and new stand alone devices that are still easier to use, than a computer. Just give a technical noob, but gifted musician some 19" delays and reverbs and computer plugins for delay and reverb and than ask her/him to add a ping pong delay to one track, room to another track and hall to a third track, in a way, that it does sound halfway ok and that the CPU load won't become an issue. CPU load won't be an issue when using stand alone devices and handling of stand alone delays and reverbs usually is much easier. Give a technical noob a pre-build Linux audio PC and ask her/him to set up, save and load settings for something like a KORG nanoKONTROL or to use an real analog synth or mixing console instead. Regards, Ralf