I personally use Ableton Live 5.1. After comparing with protools and Sonar products, I have an overall winning conclusion of cheap, aesthically attractive interface,easy to use and good quality sounds.
Those sites I gave on the earlier post were used with protools, and stuff with ableton is something like this:
http://www.thelovesong.org/mainpage/mp3s/0...ern%20skies.mp3
http://www.thelovesong.org/mainpage/mp3s/0...20to%20hate.mp3
These may not be your type of music, but just to show the quality you can achieve. btw, it only took a couple of hours for my friend to record these songs.
But to have free decent is almost impossible unless you download from somewhere like Limewire.
Hope it helps.
Ash HK