digital recording recommendations?

[patterson]

hi,
first, i'd like to say that i've been reading many of the posts on this board and they've been a great resource. this is kind of a long post, so if you take the time to read it and respond, you have my utmost gratitude. it's time to retire my tascam portastudio, so i recently bought a computer (g4 powerbook, 1.5ghz, 512 mb ram) and i'm looking to get a basic home recording setup going. I've got around $500 to spend right now. after doing some research, i think i'm leaning towards a used mbox with PT 6.4, and spending the leftover $$ on a firewire drive. it will be used mostly for demos (the consensus on here seems to be that the pres on the mbox sound "fine"), i can't really afford to have "great" sounding pres, but i obviously want to have decent sounding recordings to give to people. i can defintely get by only running 2 mics, and i'd like to be able to transfer files easily if i have to go to a studio to track drums, which is why i'm leaning towards pro tools, plus it's the only software i have experience in. the only reservation i have with PT is that i think i might end up using midi quite a bit. i have no problems learning new software if i can get a better setup going with a different hardware/software. i plan on spending a few more dollars in the future, but i don't think i'll ever have the need to upgrade this system beyond a basic home recording setup. so...to sum up, my questions are:
if you are running a similar setup to the one i'm thinking of getting, what problems have you encountered with it beyond technical glitches (sound, system limitations, etc)?
can you recommend a better setup for the same price range (better, not comprable)?
i'm a novice when it comes to midi, is it possible to record midi files in a different program then import them into pro tools to mix? or should i just skip pro tools altogether if i'm planning on using midi?

thanks a lot!

-mike

[rolandk]

Dumb question- you do know that PT has midi, right? Some of the other DAW's have (or had) more advanced midi functions than PT but it seems like all the DAW's are evening out, features wise. I've recorded/edited basic midi tracks in PTLE and it worked fine. In the summer Digizine the big boss guy said that they will expand midi/loops/soft synth capabilities in the future so I wouldn't worry about it too much.