Working on PC's so am looking at the PT/M-Audio.
If you can afford PT, that's the route I would advise. It not that PT is the best value for money, probably Reason is, and it doesn't have the best feature set for audio post until you get to the very expensive PT rigs. It's because PT dominates the professional audio post world. Probably more than 90% of the commercial audio post facilities use PT. This has four consequences:
1. If you want to upgrade at some stage, there's an obvious path, all the way up to a world class audio post facility.
2. As you upgrade, PT gets more power and more functionality in the software is unlocked but everything you had in the lower version of PT is still exactly the same, so what you've already learnt is not wasted. A serious consideration because audio post software has a pretty steep learning curve.
3. If you were using Reason, Logic or one of the other programs, there's no easy way to transfer your project to a commercial facility running PT, except using an AAF, which can be time consuming to get to work properly and may strip out much of the work you've done. With PT though, everyone from me and Alcove to Skywalker Sound will be able to just load up your PT session and it'll be exactly how you saved it. So, the more work you do in PT the less it will cost you to pass your project on to audio post pros.
4. It's easy to get advice on how to use PT for audio post. The PT forums are about the best audio software forums on the web and even Alcove and I can advise if necessary.
G