A simplistic approach might be to invest in one of the sound cards on the market; ie. one of the Blaster series by Creative. They offer a whole line of cards from the simple 2 channel stereo type up to the 4 channel 5.1 surround sound versions.

Each is priced pretty much in line with the features it offers.

Not only do you get improved sound from your PC (with decent speakers, you will hear a difference), but the appropriate software to record, mix, edit, and playback also comes with the card. They all have the capability to record in the .MP3 and .WAV formats, and there are no restrictions on the length of time you can record.

.WAV files, for example, consume a LOT of space, but if you choose, you can make one recording to entirely fill up your 300 GB hard drive.

You can edit, cut, and copy sound bites from one clip to another, merge, invert, practically do any thing you want with a sound file after you have it recorded.

The hardware is eays to install and, especially with the Creative line of cards, have very good instructions for doing so.

Among other things I do on my PC, I write (editorials and articles) but my typing skills are on a par with the analogy about giving 1000 monkeys 1000 typewriters and eventually they'll write a novel so because of that, I use a voice recognition program and can actually talk to my computer. The Sound Blaster is one card recommended by the makers of the voice recognition software as being capable of correctly "hearing" what I say (the Blaster also has a microphone input).

Hope this helps....