Yeah bro, listen to the posts above, I am the POSTER CHILD of buying gear based on recommendation instead of personal research and experience. I had a mentor when I first started out, and he was like "buy the Mpc, Triton, blah, blah, blah" and not to say that he didn't know what he was talkin about, but a few years later, I realized that FL Studio, Cool Edit Pro, and Cubase are all I really need for my style and preference for
producing.
The point is only YOU can know what type of setup (vintage hardware or software etc) that you want for yourself.
My best advice is to go to zzounds or musician's friend.com and look up the equipment and write down the specifics and then do the research (using the search function on forums such as this will help you more than asking any questions!) on any questions you might have such as timestretch, how many midi in/outs would you need, would I like to record to cpu etc,etc. DON'T buy nothing unless you can explain why you want it and how it can fit into your setup, that alone will save you thousands in this game!