i love FL studio because i can jump on, create some 4/8 bar loops pretty easily and quickly, and then if i have a 2/3 week break from it, i feel as though i dont have to "re-learn" the DAW again. There are also bountiful youtubes for FL tutorials, and Image-Line are actually a very awesome/customer focused company in my experience. FL studio also comes with some pretty great standard synths (citrus) and as you said, free updates for life is awesome too. They also have FL Mobile and FL Mobile 2 has just been released, which is great for me at work on my lunch break when i want to fuck around, make some beats on my ipad, then sync it back to my laptop i have tried using it to make mixes/mashups/edits, and i feel there are other DAWs that are better suited for this. I found Ableton a very steep learning curve compared to FL studio and Logic, granted i didnt really put much effort in as it was the last of the big 3 i tried, spent about 10 minutes with it and couldnt even get the sound configured lol ended up going i think in your case, if you are choosing between FL Studio and Ableton and focusing on remix/edits/mashups etc, go with ableton, but of course download both the free trials and have a crack