SilverWook said:

I only have a laptop these days, and haven't seen an external sound card in stores recently.

So it falls into the first "exception" category! That's a very good option, indeed, and TEAC is a solid Hi-Fi brand; I remember their gorgeous audio cassette recorders... but I digress!

About recording of analog tracks; I agree, the DVD-Recorder (IF it has the PCM option, of course) capture at 48KHz, so you have not to re-encode the track for DVD/BD compatibility reasons, as you will be forced to do with the CD-Recorder, that could record only at 44.1KHz.