I love these...=)
Vegas is intuitively easy to learn, especially for those not yet initiated into the world of hard disk recording or non-linear systems.
Vegas is the most powerful editor out there bar none, with very few excepting features. If it had surround, DTS or THX, and a few other little giggles, it would have absolutely no competition.
You don't need an external mixer at all, Vegas is capable of delivering all the automation you need. The reverbs, compressors, etc are decent, but not up to world class par. You need to get 3rd party plugs if you want to have those quality level sounds. That being said, did I mention that I've won a Grammy and an Emmy using Vegas 1.0 and 2.0, and earned top ratings at Sundance Film Festival and other similar festivals, again using Vegas? And just completed a 1 hour PBS documentary using Vegas for both the audio (18 tracks) and video? (up to 25 video tracks in some spots)
ProTools looks impressive to those who don't know what all it does, can't do, etc. Vegas is nowhere near as sexy looking, but actually is more stable, does more, and costs a little less.
You need either a couple of compatible sound cards (worst way/poorest sound way to go) or a solid multichannel DAC (digital audio converter) like a device from Echo, Midiman, Frontier, etc.
Use Vegas under XP or Win2K to take advantage of WDM drivers for nearly zero latency, depending on the speed of your machine. Get the fastest machine you can if you are really serious about audio. I use 4 dual processor systems, the slowest being 1 gig with 1 gig of RAMBUS. I also have dual AMD systems with a gig of DDR Registered.
Get fast harddrives, preferably SCSIUW/LVD. Yeah, you can do audio on IDE/ATA100 drives, but SCSIUW is still the best for throughput. Costs more, but is worth it. If you are a closet warrior/weekend musician, then you'll probably be fine with the 7200 spin IDE/ATA100 drives. Be sure DMA is enabled.
Have a minimum of 2 hard drives, one for the application and OS, and at least one for the audio to live on. 2 40 gig drives are better than 1 80 gig drive. Have a good mic preamp. Use a good mic.
With a good DAC, a good pre, a good mic, the only variables become talent and the room noise. Beef up the talent, chill out the room noise/bounce, and you've got yourself a world class studio.
BTW, during the Beta phase of 3.0, I was able to create over 100 tracks of audio, full length, 4 minutes long with no glitching, and was able to apply 4 plugin effects on several of the channels before I started to choke the system. It's rare that anyone would have that many channels open at one time. Comps are usually done before such a large morass of audio gets the chance to grow.
The other thing that's really great about NLE's, is that you can save many, many mixes, so you can recall every thing you ever did on a project. I LOVE that. The media is not affected by anything you do in Vegas, as Vegas is non-destructive, so you can have very small project files all pointing to the same media. In other words, the killer mix you had late last night, versus the one that the bass player made this morning? Do a 'save as' and store it, you can ALWAYS call it back....Handy for pleasing several people, comparing mixes, etc. In fact, many times I've had 2 versions of the same project open, and bounced back and forth between then to see what I like better.
Go for it!