If anyone is after a cheap Reason type beats and samples package, Amazon.co.uk are selling Cakewalk Kinetic 2 for £18. I've just bought one and am pretty impressed so far. Like Reason of old there's no audio recording, but it seems to do beats, synths and sample looping well, and there's a brilliant soft synth Psyn 2. It can be rewired to a DAW for audio recording. XP only. It's not as pretty as Reason, but then it's quite a bit cheaper! Hope this is useful.
Maybe all you techno enthusiasts should have a production face off?