Reply to Starting out in Music Production

Right, now I'm sure this will attract the same kind of flaming as the old Mac vs PC issue (or emacs vs vi for the oldschool programmers in here) but ...

I'd like to start producing a few tracks - it's the standard lots of ideas, no way of geting them out into the real world issue.

From what I understand the choices are roughly:

- Ableton Live - insanely powerful, almost industry standard, hard to get started with, expensive

- FL Studio - been around a while, seen as a bit 'amateur' though people like Burial have produced albums on it, cheaper than Ableton

- Pro-Tools - irrelevant to me as I odn't use a Mac, and I believe this is tied to them isn't it?

NI Maschine - don't really know a lot about this one ...

Erm, don't really know what else is out there?

What a good cheap way of starting out?

I don't want to fall into the trap that some on here seem to b (go out and drop a grand or two on CDJs/turntables/TSP/A&H mixer, turn up on the community asking how to sound like Tiesto/Deadmau5/insert famous DJ name here, then start asking daft questions about how to make the sounds come out of their computer/why can't I sync, whats an RCA plug ...)

When I started out DJing, I used a makes 'other' copy of his Traktor Sudio 3 license (yes I know ...) but rapidly bought my own copy, then a BCD3000 then TP, then a VCI100SE, then TSP & !210s etc. I'm looking to do something similar - start out cheap, see if I take to it, invest if I do ...

A little help?