Honestly, for most people doing their own stuff at home, there's really no reason you have to get into PT unless you want to. If you are a pro or semipro studio that has a clientele with certain expectations ("hey, how can this be a good studio if it doesn't have PT?"), or if you know you're going to have to export stuff into PT, or if you know you'll have to go back and forth multiple times with a PT studio, then PT may be the best choice. (Or again, if you simply like it best--nothing wrong with that.) If not, however, you can probably do what you need to do with any of a number of programs. And even if you have to export to PT, you can always just export the wave files.
All these other programs have their fans for good reasons. If everybody really needed PT all the time, none of these other programs would have any buyers. No doubt Digidesign would love you to believe that you absolutely have to have PT, but you'd benefit from taking a more impartial view.
Personally, I used to have Logic 5.5.1 for Windows, but I use Tracktion 2.1 now. It's much easier for me to learn and use, I get more done in the limited time I have, and so far there have been no Logic-only features that I've missed. (I'm sure such features exist, and I'm not saying they could never matter to anyone; I'm just saying I haven't needed them.)
Tracktion, for example, records and exports broadcast WAV files, which means that they're timestamped, which means that if you have a clip that starts partway through a song, the importing program--PT or Sonar or Logic or whatever--should be able not only to bring the WAV file into a new project but also to locate it so that it starts at the right place. For many projects, that may be all you need. For example, I'm helping a buddy with a project that was originally done partly in Logic but is now all in Tracktion. He may want to mix it in a studio with PT LE. For that, all I have to do is render all the tracks individually (this is a single command for each song, not one command per track), give them to the guy, and he can bring them in to the right spots.
The right tool for the job always depends on the nature of the job. Once you define what you need to do and what's most important to you, you'll have a clearer idea of what direction you need to take. Good luck.
All these other programs have their fans for good reasons. If everybody really needed PT all the time, none of these other programs would have any buyers. No doubt Digidesign would love you to believe that you absolutely have to have PT, but you'd benefit from taking a more impartial view.
Personally, I used to have Logic 5.5.1 for Windows, but I use Tracktion 2.1 now. It's much easier for me to learn and use, I get more done in the limited time I have, and so far there have been no Logic-only features that I've missed. (I'm sure such features exist, and I'm not saying they could never matter to anyone; I'm just saying I haven't needed them.)
Tracktion, for example, records and exports broadcast WAV files, which means that they're timestamped, which means that if you have a clip that starts partway through a song, the importing program--PT or Sonar or Logic or whatever--should be able not only to bring the WAV file into a new project but also to locate it so that it starts at the right place. For many projects, that may be all you need. For example, I'm helping a buddy with a project that was originally done partly in Logic but is now all in Tracktion. He may want to mix it in a studio with PT LE. For that, all I have to do is render all the tracks individually (this is a single command for each song, not one command per track), give them to the guy, and he can bring them in to the right spots.
The right tool for the job always depends on the nature of the job. Once you define what you need to do and what's most important to you, you'll have a clearer idea of what direction you need to take. Good luck.
