Composing/recording setup: choices, choices, choices

[*$%($*(@!!]

I'd like to have a highly functional setup, geared mostly for composing, but able to record some vocals and guitars, bass as well. I've had extensive home setups before, but not in a long time. To give you an idea of how long ago, the centerpiece of my setup was Performer, before it was digital performer, and I had an AKAI 12 track that was tempermental at best. I stopped doing scoring work just as everybody was getting into the ADAT allessis stuff for recording audio sycned along with midi.

A few years ago I started to get back into it a bit and got digital performer, the motu 828, some native instruments stuff (absolutely love their b4, sounds amazingly like the real thing to me, and I spent a lot of time around b3s back in the day), then motu's mach five and a few other things.

But I never got that much into any of it, I just didn't have the time to devote to learning it/getting a hold of it. In the years since I rediscoverd guitar, got a lot of great guitar gear and got some of my chops back - playing in a couple bands,etc... Now that I've got a hold of that, I'm feeling the urge to add a good composing set up.

One thing that's made it difficult is I've used the Mac I get issued from work (I'm in advertising) but you're not supposed to add your own software to it, so I've been flying under the radar, and it's just a pain in the neck. I'd rather have a dedicated mac at home that I can compose on. Plus I'm always pushing the capabilities of whatever mac I have. I'd like to have plenty of headroom so I don't have to worry about that.

At NAMM a couple of years ago I saw a few great symphonic software packages, whole orchestras in a box that sounded great, and I'd love to get something like that. I'd like to have one for orchestral, one for jazz trio/quartet, quintet, etc, one for composing rock, r&B etc etc. I'd love to have the setup as turnkey as possible: realistic sounding and playing instruments that inspire you to play and write. But easy enough to not get lost in the mechanics.

I got the MOTU stuff just because I'd used it historically and was used to the interface. But since I never got a good hold on the digital performer way of doing things, I'm wondering if I shouldn't switch over to ProTools, since so many people/studios use that. On the other hand, I just did a little investigating into a symphonic package, Eletronic Musician gave the nod to a package costing $10k that would be out of my range. On the other hand, MOTU's Symphonic Intrument seems like it might be a good place to start, and possibly get a lot of work out of. And I see that since I have Digital Performer, I can upgrade to it's new version for $199 or so. But I don't want to work in the wron setup to save a few bucks...

So my questions I guess are:

1)Would you recommend starting over with Pro Tools v. Digtial Perfomer?
2) How much Mac do you think I need to meet my criteria? And what virtual instruments would you recommend right off the bat?

thanks!