I went for protools LE coz out of the box it was very similar (to me) to being in a normal (back then) studio and it worked with my win 98 box. I always used the mix window, hardly ever straying to the edit window (ohh do I have to). More recently, some guys I was playing with got Cuebase, and liked that better (I really couldn't see that much difference, well I suppose protools came more from digital recording and will also sequence where Cuebase come from a sequencing background and added digital recording, they are very similar though (as Peter? says, slightly different work flow), in the end they both do the same job, and they are both so "rich" as applications, you need to stick with one and get "reasonable" at it). Always the big down side (until now) with protools is you're locked to their hardware (not that its bad, on the contrary, their I/O is very good), but you're locked. And now driver issues to go 64 bit (not good!). I'm pissed that the newer versions (PT10/11 whatever) don't support my digi 001, so I stay where I am or go buy more stuff.