Midi Controllers vs Keyboards

[Masterdog]

Hi all,

So I'm thinking about getting a new keyboard. It's been a while since I've looked into what features keyboards have (my current keyboard proudly boasts its floppy disk drive). Having browsed this forum and music sites, I notice that midi controllers seem to be very popular.
As I understand them, midi controllers are essentially dumb terminals that plug into a PC and are simply a method of playing notes which are played through the PC's midi. What I don't understand is why they're so popular - MIDI usually sounds terrible, and there's no advice with it about buying a specialised MIDI card, high-end audio card or something similar.
I've probably got the wrong end of the stick somewhere, but can anyone explain to me why someone might want a midi controller as opposed to a traditional keyboard?

Cheers,

MD

 

[Masterdog]

So MIDI controllers are used with synth software which plays the notes using its own synthesised sounds? How good do these sound?
(Sorry, this is quite alien to me - I only use MIDI for getting my keyboard to play things, rather than the other way round)

 

[Masterdog]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'd like to give this a try - are there any demo versions of this kind of software, and are there any decent tutorials? If not, what's the best software to learn on? Hopefully these'll be the last questions