Well, unless you intend to compose your music remotely, I'd get a desktop computer. This way you can grow into it better if you need to add cards and such. Then again, today's notebook computers are more powerful than day's past so even with the small footprint, they can really do a lot. But still, I'd get a desktop if you want to make sure you have enough horsepower and room to grow into it.
You really only need ProTools if you intend to edit sound and such. I wouldn't use it for actual composition as its MIDI implementation isn't as strong as say Logic Audio or Digital Performer.
You first need to ask yourself if you want to work on Mac or Windows. Then, the decision to buy whichever soft synths is answered by what type of music you intend to create (for the most part at least).
Some bigger questions are, do you intend to do this professionally or as a hobby? If professionally, then there are some much bigger questions to ask like, where will you put all this equipment? Is the sound controllable in the room(s) you intend to use this with? Will you be doing a lot of live/mic recording or is it all synth? Then you get into mic choices, mic pres, patchbays, acoustics, so on and so on and so on. Before you know it, you could open up a whole can of worms!
Marco Solorio | CreativeCow Host | OneRiver Media | Codec Resource Site | Cinesoft | Media Batch
