Until my new studio is built, I am in a smallish room in my house, and I'd like to still have some drums available for when drummers come by to either rehearse or record. At first I was looking at a small set of digital drums, but I don't want to cram them into the space, and don't think I'll be using them extensively before wanting to replace them for the new studio I'm building. I learned about the SamplePad Pro, and thought that perhaps this was a low-cost solution that would come in handy in a number of situations. In my current studio I could hook it up to my Superior Drummer 3 software and take advantage of those drumkits. I might add a hi-hat and kick drum pedal, which I might need in the future for a new digital drumset. I am not a drummer myself, so I don't want to spend too much. The Samplepad Pro is $300, and I can justify it as a short-term workaround for band rehearsals, learning arrangements, and even some recording of "live" tracks. Anyone who has used this, or a competing model (most I saw were more expensive) I'd appreciate your feedback on whether this is a useful tool or not, or your general impressions of this as a short-term, occasional use item. Thanks.

We have the smaller SamplePad as an addon for the Digital Drum Kit at Church and it works really well.
 
Have you seen the Yamaha DD-75? My son had an earlier version of this when he first started playing and it was pretty good as a starter. The one he had had MIDI ins and outs. It came with a couple of little pad switches for Bass Drum and Hi Hat it certainly worked as a portable kit to start learning on sounds were ok as well.

The SamplePad Pro is on my wishlist at Sweetwater. That, and a $10K set of Roland V-Drums! 
 
The Alesis was my choice after a couple of weeks of research.

Good feedback, I will check out the Yamaha, and good to know the Alesis makes some sense to others as well...