I Hate to Admit It

Sogood has got all the bases covered here. I can offer an alternative; buy SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platnium Sound card (along with your new PC;)) which has good DACS along with digital outs to make that connection to your stereo. I find Jukebox a little cumbersome, but haven't put much effort into it since Roxio EZ CD Creator v.5 is so easy. I usually do not recommend that software since I have had so many problems with it, but it works pretty well with their latest patch, and you can rip some high quality MP3s. A large HD is a must (size is up to you, but make sure its ATA133 running at 7200 RPMs) and USB 2 is a wise recommendation. If you want to use the laptop, buy the Extigy by SB which gets you 80% of the way there, and an external HD, but in my experience with Sony, you'd be happier with a new PC. Dude, get a Dell!!!!:)

I'm a big supporter of using computer based hard disk systems as digital music jukeboxes. Click on my system and look at the Imp/perfection system for details of my current setup. However, as far as archiving goes, nothing beats the original vinyl disk, with the original CD coming in second. The reason is that hard disks drives are not a proven long term storage medium. Ten years is a real long time by hard disk standards. Compare that to vinyl (40+ years) or commercially stamped CDs (20 years minimum). My advice is if you do convert to a hard disk server that you keep the originals as your backups.

All current Apple computers are bundled with the appropriate software (iTunes) to rip CDs to hard disk and to organize the music for playback. If you are looking to convert vinyl the then I would suggest acquiring an external A/D converter (I recommend the Apogee Rosetta $1,150 street price) and some recording software (I use Spark XL, but there are others). Converting vinyl to digital is a fairly tedious project.

Converting from vinyl obviously has to be done in real time (as opposed to ripping a CD which can be done in 5 minutes). Once its recorded you still have to break down each album side into individual songs (optional, but strongly recommended) and then once you import them into iTunes you still have to type in song titles and artist names (this is done automatically if you rip a commercially available CD). Count on taking around 1 hour for each album.

The following is a link to professionally caliber A/D/A converter with a firewire interface. It's designed to work with laptops:
http://www.mhlabs.com/index2.html

This link is for a pro caliber internal soundcard with very good quality (but not excellent) converters:
http://www.rme-audio.de/english/digi96/digi96pa.htm

The ideal option for airplay or other portable use is to have a dedicated computer and an Apple iPod. You can transfer songs back and forth.
http://www.apple.com/ipod/

Cwlondon, you're right about one thing. Once you have your music on hard disk it will be a breeze to make compilation CDs. It's a simple drag and click operation. iTunes allows you to add a comment to each song. I use the comment field to add a numerical rating for each song which I can then use to sort the entire database (13,000 songs). Approximately 200 songs got the highest rating. As a birthday present I gave a good friend of mine 11 CDRs composed of my fav songs. He absolutely flipped - said it was the best present (other than from his wife) that he had ever gotten. It took me a little more than an hour to do it all.

Converting to hard disk is not a trivial process, but once you do it you will be amazed at how easily you can access all of your music. You'll listen much deeper into your collection than you ever have before.

if you want decent sound from your computer, but nothing else most commercial systems will not suit your needs well. Talk to one of the smaller companies like micron or abs and spec out a computer with 2 hard drives in as big of a tower as you have space for for future additions, you do not need anything fancy just lots of space, a celeron or duron system should work, and get a good cd burner as this will have fast audio extraction and you can make compilations. use EAC to rip onto the hard drive as wavefiles and buy a soundcard with a digital output because an audio dac will sound much better than anything in a computer.