In need of tips for looping effectively

Hey all. Long time, no post. School's going well, I've been selected to go to Malawi, Africa for 3 weeks during the Christmas break to study AIDS and I won a 4000$ scholarship. Other than that, nothing much has happened with me :).

Last week I went to Steve's in Montreal (big music store) and made some purchases. I got a headset microphone and a cheap $100 used multi-effects pedal. I play my flute while wearing the mic, it picks up the sound and runs it through the effects and gives it sweet otherworldy sounds. Great fun. I haven't been able to mess around with it too much because during the week I live in a tiny appartment with angry neighbours on all sides, but once I get all my equipment home for a weekend I'll be having great fun with it.

My question is fairly straight-forward. What are some effective (and cost-effective) means to start doing looping? It's fairly obvious that it is the new trend and I've got some great ideas for it. I'm thinkink digital is probably the way to go; I've got a laptop but it's absolutely useless...

What should I do?

Cheapest loopers are:

Boss RC20
Line 6 DL4
Digitech Jamman
Electroharmonix 16 Second Delay

All of these have the limitation of simply building up one track and not leaving any room for variation once that's done. I would recommend trying before you buy and figuring out which is best for you, probably one of the top three.

This is my cue to plug the Boomerang phrase sampler.

On the one hand, it's priced somewhat higher than the units listed above (street price currently $430, and I see one listed on eBay now for $330).

However, it turns out (and my hands tremble as I type this) that a new, improved model, the Boomerang III, is slated for release ca. 1 Dec. It will offer many more features with higher audio fidelity in a smaller housing. Ergo, in a couple of months, the price of previous Boomerangs ought to drop dramatically.