I would love to go for the Gate expander - but I'm in poor mans mode right now.I'm really enjoying Mix Bus. I do composition in Sonar5 and export to Mix buss for mixing and final edits. It's a very good combination for me.
I think that most of the plugs actually have a sort of demo mode. At least the basics package plugs worked when you called them up but the GUI dissappeared - the actual plug was working in the background.-not sure if that applies to the higher end plugs though.