Well people and cakewalk can call it what they want, and make repeated vain attempts to explain what it is or is not, they can play semantics until the cows come home, the facts are that to the majority it IS a subscription, in the same way that everyone has come to understand magazine subscriptions etc etc, when you get to the end of your subscription, you keep the magazines, you don't give them back, or they don't miraculously become unreadable or go into demo mode, same thing. That IS what a subscription is to a lot of people, most people, stop trying to step around it, and going to great lengths to try and talk people out of thinking its a subscription, that's what they know a subscription as, call it what it is.
As for the DAW's, haven't used fruit loops, but ableton is fine, I however would put Studio One at the top followed by Reaper, then leave the rest in order behind them. Studio One deserves all the recognition it gets, it has so many outstanding and useful features, features that for me are indespensable, and it's not just the big features, it's rock solid, and feels so polished, since changing from Sonar I haven't looked back, haven't missed a thing. Reaper, well it is an awesomely powerful DAW, very deep and capable, and practically without limits, stuff it has had for years is only now being implemented in other DAW's like Sonar, it's only issue is its 'look' it's user friendliness, a lot of people assume it can't do this or that, when in fact it can, it's just hidden away in some right click menu or some obscure place, and that is also part of the problem, it's not really intuitive in places like that. But look out world if they ever address that side of it.
But one thing for Sonar, it has good forums, especially with regards to the software and deals forums.