Perhaps you are asking about which specific edition to get? I.e., Base, Full, Professional, or Developer Suite? In that case, don't bother with the Base. You can get the Full, but be aware that it does not come with the Application Builder, which allows you to compile your LabVIEW program into an application that you can install on other systems (the target systems would require only the free LabVIEW Run-Time Engine). You can, however, buy the Application Builder as an add-on for the Full. The Full version also does not come with the ability to directly interface with Source Code Control systems, but that's not a major issue since you can do this outside of LabVIEW (I use SVN with TortoiseSVN).
So, either get the Full or the Pro.
Regardless of the version the signal acquisition would be done with hardware using DAQmx. DAQmx is the driver for the DAQ cards, and it's a free install.
