Interested in buying a synthesizer, but don't really know where to start. Is Korg the way to go? What else do i need laptop (mac or pc) any singletrack musicians able to point me in the right direction?

get a decent midi keyboard with plenty of knobs and sliders and use software synths running on your laptop/pc.
it will be a lot cheaper and give you a lot more flexability than having dedicated hardware synths

although if i had the money and space i would go for proper synths

check out teenage engineering, very impressive…

wow like the look of teenage engineering!

not being daft but what are you intending to do with it?

I Have a wide range of music tastes so don't just want a beep maker, don't need anything too professional, as i mainly intend just to play around to start with, but the other half is in a band so potential to guest on some tracks?
Can read music so not a complete beginner.

I guess you can either go for something retro and analogue (likely to be expensive, monophonic and tricky to use live) or modern and digital. A decent MIDI setup and softsynths ought to give you the best of both worlds, but will be less hands-on and fun than playing around with knobs and sliders. 🙂

Software synths with a decent midi keyboard is the most convenient and flexible way, but nothing beats having a real hardware synth with dedicated nobs and sliders. Much more inspiring to mess about with imo. They also arguably often sound better, though the difference now is pretty minimal.

A modern Virtual Analogue synth is probably the way to go imo – not mega expensive and relatively easy to learn the basics of programming. If you have a interface for a laptop with midi you can also use it as a midi keyboard. Korg stuff is pretty damn good – it just so happens I am selling an MS2000r which is awesome, but is just a module you have to control from something else, it has no keyboard, and I prefer the convenience of having a keyboard built in.

My Alesis Ion is probably my favourite synth. Haven't looked into anything that has come out in the last few years though.

<i>I Have a wide range of music tastes so don't just want a beep maker, don't need anything too professional, as i mainly intend just to play around to start with, but the other half is in a band so potential to guest on some tracks?
Can read music so not a complete beginner. </i>

Makes a change 😉 These days it's mostly 'yoofs' who fancy themselves as DJ producers and can't actually 'play' for love nor money 🙂

More info would still be useful though, you say you read, have you any keyboard skills? If yes you might want to think about something with a weighted touch sensitive full-size keyboard.

Your other halfs band, do they use any software / a Mac? What kind of music, will you be playing live or putting down tracks on the Mac etc.?

Are you interested in programming your own sounds? If so I'd ditto grums comment about getting something with knobs and sliders on.

Finally, what's your budget?