i personally do not like mac's but about everyone loves them in the the graphics design field i think...in fact a lot of courses you could take use mac's.

They do have some of the best designs for their products...very stylish.

unless your transferring a lot of data, forget networking and just use a jumpdrive...or an external hard drive.

you can get 4gig jump drives or memory sticks very cheap...10 bucks on sale probably. less complicated than networking and i assume that you are not too computer savvy, please excuse me if that offends or i am wrong about your skill level.

pretty much the differences in my opinion are:
quality of the brand (cheaper does not always equal poor quality), and features.
there are 4 types A, B, G and N (there are some called "draft N" that were using N features before it was released technically and those may not attain the highest transfer rates) A uses 5Ghz radio frequency and used to be a lot more expensive. Some have dual band and use the 5 and 2Ghz radios but its usually more expensive and pretty unlikely you would need the compatibility with the 5Ghz anyway.

Depends on what you are using it for...just a wifi connection to the net...then a G type would be fine and probably save you some cash but, if your going to use it like me to backup/transfer several gigs to another PC then you would want N and maybe even the wired ports to be gigabit instead of the typical 100 megabit. N is the newest standard so i would go with it if cost is not an issue or you find something similar in price range to a G type. Forget B type its way outdated and slower than the faster broadband speeds available now days.

go to control panel...it should be listed under "hardware and sound"...or if you have the volume icon in the system tray (next to you clock in the bottom right hand corner, may have to click upwards pointing triangle icon to reveal all the items in systray) then you can also right click on the speaker icon and select "recording devices"
hope this helps.