very well put Khazul. I was going to write something similar when I got out of work, but you beat me to it
Keep in mind, I am a big fan of cubase. Started using cubase back in the 3.7 days, upgraded to version 5.x, then moved over to sx1, then to 2 and finally on to 3. It was kind of a fluke that I picked up Ableton.
Took me a while to really get good at using ableton (the session view was a whole new way of thinking for me) and now that I have a year of experience with it, I have to say, hands down Live is most functional and flexible daw for me. Live lets a musician be a musician (while still giving you all the capabilities of a world class daw). I couldn't imaging try to compose again on cubase.
Up to this point, I still had been doing my mastering in cubase, but am now bringing this phase over to Live as well.
It's just an all around great piece of software.