The people I know that started out with reason except for one who is super dope, burned out. Whereas the people that started out with equipment, mpc's tended to stay with it and eventually learned how to use programs like reason and fl studio etc because they already had a foundation. If your just starting out and you grab a copy of reason, it can be overwhelming because you have everything at your fingertips. Plus things are so accessible, like theres 5000 snares, you can just click to the one you want, you dont have to worry about changing attack, release, decay, sustain, filters and other envelopes. As you get better you probably will explore and learn to tweak sounds..but with fl and reason its not really necessary to learn what its about and what the functions aka knobs and sliders do because you can literally click on a better sound or somehow autochange it to fit rather than manually manipulating sound and creating effects.
I figure if its something you want to do you'll do it one way other the other, you could buy a maschine or mpc and it collect dust, you could spend money on reason or find a free download and never use them....as far as the best bang for your buck...that depends on what your looking for, because you could get something with a good sound card that sounds good to your ear otherwise you can find that easily but if your looking for specs like processors and harddrives its going to be tough, im assuming you want a laptop? desktop would be better....
i swear it was i pain in the ass mixing while the beat was bugging .Def recommend intel cpu for music i3 or better should do the job fine.