It is - when it works. I used to multitrack like that, until one night during an important recording the system stopped working. It was one of those rare, unreproduceable things that still seem to happen to PCs (and Macs, too) every now and then. Since then, I've replaced all this with a PC-less setup (recording mixer and multitrack recorder), and I have seen no issues at all so far.

I know these problems are rare, but when something goes wrong at a critical moment...

- Martin

This could be a nice component:

Tascam FW-1884
http://tascam.com/products/fw-1884;9,14,46,16.html

It has preamps, A/Ds, faders and is expandable, connects to a PC/Mac with Firewire, and acts as a standalone mixer when there is no PC. If the PC fails, the camera is your backup recorder. It's compatible with FinalCut, so if that's your NLE, you'll already have the audio tracks in your timeline.

(And, no, I don't work for Tascam.)