Hardware questions.

[Anna Schneider]

Once again, thank you everyone for your help.  Here's another round of 
questions.

It was recommended to me by someone on this list that I make sure that the 
hardware I get with my computer is Linux and speech compatible.  Or maybe 
it was just Linux.  So that when I order my computer, I can be specific.  
I would like to go laptop if possible, but I understand that that may not 
work.  Again, if people could please go from experience.  I do think I 
will wind up using a combination of Speakup with Red Hat and Emacs with 
Emacspeak which I know is Linux too but if it's important, well you all 
know.  Please define acronyms and other computer terminology as you answer 
or you are going to get a lot of "what did that mean questions".  Remember 
I'm learning not only about Linux but Im' catching up with the computer 
world in general so I'm major out of the loop.

Thank you ago.  Here goes.

Can people here recommend based on experience:

a certain type of Cd burner?  I was led to understand that this is better 
than CD ROM because it can be used to write to as well as to read from.

a printer.  I don't know that I need color printing, but I do need one 
that is fairly flexible in terms of formatting.  I will, for example, need 
to print everything from standard documents to labels and invoices.

a sound card

a video card.  This should be decent quality.  I'm an artist and I use a 
lot of color, and in the event that I ever find a way to play with my 
images on the computer, even if it's through a hired assistant, I should 
have decent color capability.  It does not have to be top of the line, 
just decent.

modem.  I was led to understand by a friend that for laptop there are 
actually modem cards that can be taken in and out of a slot that can also 
be used for data cards and things.  This would be nice, but I'm willing to 
listen to all modem suggestions.

And last of all scanners.  Some debate seems to have occurred on this 
issue and it's left me very confused.  OCR shop is looking good to me at 
present.  If there are other options please explain, but in the meantime, 
can anyone recommend a brand and model of SCSI scanner, and what will I 
need in order to hook it into my computer?

If there's anything hardware wise I've left out, please feel free to 
mention it as well.

Thank you again.  And of course, references to sources of info on the web 
are always welcome.

Anna