What kind of music do you make? I've been wanting to try Ableton out but it kind of looks geared toward working with samples and MIDI. I mostly record guitars and all my instruments live with a mic. Is Ableton appropriate for recording and mixing recorded music? Would you say it is as powerful as Logic Pro 9 (my primary DAW)?
I've recorded all kinds of music in Ableton. The main thing you have to cope with is Ableton expects you to work with a constant tempo on a grid, although it doesn't force you to in any way. It's very easy to just record straight into it like any other multitrack DAW and turn off all the grids and quantization.
I'm still a fan of Logic Pro and will most likely buy the upgrade. My workflow gravitates towards Ableton for grid-based compositions (I do a lot of electronic music) and Logic for anything where I'm recording "real" instruments like guitar and vocals, because of Logic's great comping workflow.
I make mainly hiphop beats and some experimental stuff, as well as recording and mixing hiphop artists. I've also recorded acoustic stuff. I would generally say that Logic would be a better choice for recording (though Ableton does have that capability). It's mixing and routing capabilities are fairly easy to use in simple cases, but it's more difficult to create complex setups than in Logic.
Where Ableton really excels (other than for live performance) is in productivity of compositing and production when working entirely within the application. It could be compared to using digital painting applications to create a work of visual art entirely in software.
