Justin, I didn't use ProTools because of the Digidesign politic!!!
In early 1995 I bought the first Audiomedia III in my country from the PT distributor after it's presentation. They give it with Session Software, something like Session8, but for Audiomedia. They told us that it is only matter of time to give us new soft for the card (for free!!) because this soft was only 8 channels, without plugs, etc (it was 1995:-)) to make stable drivers (the driver for NT was 1.0 till the end of the card!!! and was fulduplex!!!), to make ASIO, and more, and more. Justin, if you have been on Digidesign forums these years, you know that the response from the users was... They were starting the posts with: The f.....ing Digi :-) This situation was 3 YEARS!!!!! Tell me, how a normal person will wait 3 years for support of his card? The card itself is very good, for me it's sound is better than the sound of M-box, but without software support it is nothing. The truth behind this fact is that nobody in the company was interested in the what you say pro-sumer market. They wanted only to sell hi-end systems for lots of money.
But time changed, there are fast computers with native plug-ins, and Digi realized that native software is in more adequate situation. So they started to offer M-box, Digi001, 002, PTLE and so on. Now the drivers are compatible with Audiomedia, I can use with it PTLE, but I can't wait until now, I bought Cubase, RME and DA7. It's not about the money. I think that if a man or a company is not correct to me once, he (or it) can do it again.
And about the money. PT is veeeeery overpriced. Check their pricelist. Check the price of one single Y-cable! What is it? Maybe it is pure gold metal:-)
And about the DSP-cards. IT was very elegant solution when computers were on 75 mHZ, more than this, this was the ONLY solution. But now for me it doesn't matter if the CPU of the computer or the farm card is making the computing, computing is computing in both cases, it is not worst or better, and the sound behind the digits is the same. The mixing engine does matter, of course, but in my opinion, PT is not the only one good alternative for mixing. Sorry for the english:-(