Mine in Dallas have had 4 approximately 15 minute outages since Christmas. It's a bummer.

That is an important distinction. I agree.

You mean geeks think they're better than everyone? I can't believe it. This figuratively blows my mind.

I think we should get rid of all writing. With all of those spelling and grammar issues to contend with, I think writing is too hard and too error prone. Since I suck at writing, I can't imagine that anyone else finds it useful at all. We should move to pictures and video for everything. With technology being what it is, what's the point of words anymore?

-Suck my DIckens

I know it's not fashionable on Slashdot, but a Mac with Logic does everything you want to do. Logic even does notation reasonably well. I've used it to score string parts and it's fine. It isn't as good as Finale, but you can try it and see if it does what you want. It's $200 for Logic Pro X which pretty much gobbles up the difference between the cost of the mac and an equally equipped PC with Pro Tools. You'll still need IO, but that tends to not be terribly expensive. It also comes with boatloads of synths and samples, so you likely won't need to buy those (although I love everything that Native Instruments makes and highly recommend everything they make).

If you get more into the synthesis side of things, you can also check out Max/MSP. You can also check out PureData, if you want something open source. For your initial requirements, I think a mac running Logic Pro X is the best solution though, and could end up being the cheapest in an apples to apples comparison.

I use a mac with Ableton/MaxMSP live in a band setting and use Logic Pro X for recording anything multi-track where phase correlation matters (drums, live recordings, etc.). I use MOTU IO. I rarely have problems. The gear just works. I rarely spend time optimizing or fiddling with settings. I plug things in and it makes/records noise. I think those last four sentences are very important when making music.

If I sit down to record and get distracted by having to fuck with processes running in the background, or crackling and popping on my IO because my buffer settings aren't dialed in or because some errant process is causing things to hang momentarily every few minutes, that distracts me from making music. I love open source for a lot of things, but no one has really dialed in open source audio to the point where you're not constantly messing with it. Windows is actually the same way. Some people like that though. Some people don't mind spending time dialing things in, if it saves them some money. I'm not that guy though. I know that macs aren't immune to problems, but I have significantly fewer problems with background processes making my life difficult than I had with my windows boxes. Windows 8.1 might be better, I haven't tried it, but 8 had all the same irritating problems that 7 and XP had for me.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. I recommend a mac with Logic. It works great for me. Take lots of people's suggestions and see which ones align the most with what you're trying to do, and then run with it. Spend time making music and not worrying about your decision once you're running. There is an extraordinary amount of brilliant software out there. If you go with a PC and Reaper, you'll have more capability to make amazing music than was available even a few years ago, and it will be cheap. You can't really lose, regardless of the decision you make.

Yea, you're right. I have a laptop I'm looking to trade. Let the consuming begin!

I think you have a big screen and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse hooked to an OS that sucks for those devices. I also think you have a bunch of software not written for those interfaces. But what do I know. Maybe it will be fine. Currently I don't like it. Maybe someone will do it in a way that makes it awesome.

Yep, phones are for consuming things, and in a pinch, they can kind of limp along at creating things. Computers are for creating.

What exactly was taken away? The start button?

Seriously. When you have a start button, you do the following:
move your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen,
click it,
move your mouse to the app you want to open,
click it.

In Windows 8 it works like this:
move your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen,
click it,
move your mouse to the app you want to open,
click it.

It's the exact same. I swear the people complaining about this stuff aren't actually using it. I always feel like I'm using a different product than the one people are reviewing.

I was in Edmonton earlier this year for work. I was talking music with some guys that lived there and they hadn't heard of spotify. I went to show it to them an lo-and-behold it didn't work in Canada. I don't know if it was just spotify, but perhaps their sales are high because of a lack of easy alternatives. It would be interesting to know if Canada had more draconian laws against file sharing and streaming, or if it is actually something cultural.

I had a basement flood. It filled up about 3 feet deep because the drain plug in the basement of the house I was renting clogged while it was flooding. My entire studio was in the basement. I had a laptop on the floor, my computer, a bunch of Mackie SRM450 speakers, a mackie mixer, a bunch of guitar pedals. All of it was under water. After getting all the water out of the basement, tearing out the drywall, removing the carpet and dehumidifying everything in less than 72 hours I start looking at my electronics. I dismantled things just enough that air could get in and let them sit in the room for a week with the dehumidifier expecting the worst. At the end of the week I went and started turning stuff on. In the end I had to buy a new CMOS batter for my motherboard on my desktop PC. Literally every other thing (well over 30 various plugged-in-during-the-flood electronic devices) had no problems. I was expecting to have to get my insurance company involved but was stoked to find that even the cones on the mackie speakers were fine. I honestly think that in most cases you're inviting problems by trying to clean things out. Your electronics are not going to grow mold if you run an industrial dehumidifier for a week. If the water was filthy then it will be a different story, but I would say that if the boards look clean then don't put anything else on them. That's just my $.02.