I gave Pro Tools | First one more try last night, short answer is......still too unstable for my taste (and I'm putting this as nicely as I can). Methinks I'm sticking with Sonar. Sonar just boots up very quickly and runs very easily on my Windows 8.1, dual core, i7 Dell laptop.
Pro Tools......not so much......perhaps Pro Tools hates PCs?

Just to chime in, Pro Tools is very stable for me on my PC, while Sonar crashes from time to time. So it might be something else. With my previous audio interface, Sonar was more stable than PT.

Half way through last year I bought into PT because I wanted to get into the Slate Raven touchscreen system. They were just starting with porting over to Windows from Mac and PT was first. Along with that I was also changing to the Digigrid system. I was moving very much into the PT ecosystem. I'm glad for the flexibility of control surface options but not for PT itself. It sure is a program where a course would help.

After years of working with Sonar I found PT was mind numbingly complex where it didn't need to be.
Add that to the Raven touch it sure has been a brain twisting time.

It won't be too long before Raven will be available for Sonar and I can't wait