Reaper is a relatively new sequencer along the veins of Logic and Cubase with a complete stack of features for Windows and Macintosh. It is the single most awesome thing to happen to home musicians for a reason I will shortly reveal.
Reaper is capable of running VST/VSTi's, Direct X plugins, it can record live audio on multiple channels, has powerful piano roll and wave editors, and full ReWire support. It's extremely user friendly (Far more so than Cubase) and being mainly developed for PC, it should be attractive to all those first-timers who have no idea what a command key is. It is, by all means, a very competent sequencer as far as things go, and I'm hard pressed to find any features that Logic can do that Reaper cannot.
Now here's the best part. If you want to purchase Reaper for commercial use, it's $255. If you want to use it non commercialy, it's only $50.
If, however, you're new to audio and are unlikely to be making any full tracks in it any time soon, the trial version is COMPLETELY UNLIMITED, giving you a real chance to try before buy. That's right, besides from a short (6 second) 'Click here to purchase' message on boot, there's no time limits or technical barriers that will stop you from using it to its full potential.
I'm thinking that the Reaper team realised that, no matter how much time they spend trying to pirate-proof something, people will eventually work out how to bypass it and it will be up on bittorrent in a few weeks, and this is a good thing, as not only means that you can learn to use it for free, but it also means that they spend more time on the important aspect of learning to use the software.
Why am I bringing this here in some huge advertising like tone? Back when I regged these forums, we were forever hassled by new musicians trying to find the ultimate free sequencer package - and now there more or less is one. They can download the trial, learn how to use it, then cough up $50 to license it for non-commercial use which covers the NG license. It's perfect, its cheap, and if everyone starts up on the same gear, then it will start to generate it's own powerful user base who can solve each others problems.
Anyway, without any further stalling, here's a link to their website.
Oh and the download is only 3.2mb, as if things couldn't get any better.