I have a couple of old tapes that my sister has of a local band from the 80s that had local success (their name was Limited Warranty) that they never put out on CD (so therefore I can't buy the CD) what is the best software to use to convert it to CD? I tried Nero 6 and it doesn't work very well at all to capture (and the editing doesn't work with Vista at all)

I connected my tape player to the Line In port on my soundcard and captured them as MP3's using AudioGrabber. You can then burn them to CD using Nero

You might try Adobe Audition which I believe has a 30-day unrestricted demo. It has very good editing and capture capabilities plus a lot of options for equalizing the audio you've captured.

Stu

What furtive said, however, give Audacity a spin. It's free, and while isn't quite in the same league of Audition/Cool Edit, is really good.

The only thing I've used Total Recorder in the past is grabbing internet streams as they play. However many sound cards have a 'What U Hear' input on them which basically is a loopback of the output, which in my mind renders Total Recorder effectively obsolete.