Audio Systems: Office stereo system, office stereo, safe bet

Question
I am setting up an office and wish to run music throughout.  At a minimum, I need to run 7 speakers.  I want to connect a receiver to a computer located at the front desk in the office.  I was wondering what would be the best to set this up.  I went to best buy and was advised to run a A/B receiver with a transceiver in order to connect all the speakers.  Is this the only way or what would be the best?
Thanks
Mike

Answer
It's frightening to think that anyone would give you that information. It's a safe bet that Best Buy doesn't hire salesman knowledgable in audio. If they sold you a receiver they'd be seeing it in rather short order, cooked or to put it technically, cutting off and going into thermal protect because of an overload.

There are several ways to do this; One is to go consumer (IE: best buy) using Audioplex Optimatch or equivalent volume controls for every speaker; or commercial and that's using a 70V amplifier, 70v speakers and 70v volume controls. Regardless of which way you go you do not want to overload the input of the amplifier from the output of your computer. If you are using the computer for anything other then music then you might want to think about another source like an iPod or CD player because everytime you change the volume of your computer you will effect the sound system.