i had a md at first, before getting the whole rig together, and i had plenty of good experiences with it... my transfer process was like this:
i found a japanese made sony md station that had a detachable md recorder (similar to a mz-r37 except older and clunkier) and the station it sat in had an optical out! you can probably find a home md deck with a digi out for not too much cash for digital transfers...then i took that optical signal into a soundblaster live! 5.1 with the add-on card + digi/opti i/o module....not the most accurate (or so i've read) transfer method, but it kept the signal digital and i couldn't hear a difference. from there, i recorded real-time into sound forge 4.5xp which came with the soundblaster card (later moved up to sf5.0) and it was all good. no d>a>d necessary.
of course, if you don't think you'll be keeping the md for that long, you may not want to invest in all that crap. of couse, if you do plan on continuing taping, without the md, you'll want to get a whole different slew of crap! my advice, save money where you can, but don't skimp on quality...
i have since upgraded my whole setup to a laptop, a usbpre (pre-amp, a>d converter, capable of 24-bit/48khz), some nice mics that i liked, and a echo mia card for my home pc, strictly for the bit accuracy and 24-bit/96khz d>a for playback on some schweet powered studio monitors...
my name is simp-dawg and i am a gear whore.