Everyone raves about Logic but I've always been a Cubase man, 3.1 at home and just upgraded the studio Cubase to the latest version, I forget which it is though.
If I was starting out with no background in production methodology at all, I would go with something relatively simplistic at first, but once you grasp the concept of arrangement it's all onto the geeky stuff like mastering and EQing your channels.
James and I love hardware synths but that's easy for us to say because he's had 15 years of collecting them and we're spoiled for choice. But there are plenty of good softsynths and VSTs to go through, although Nexus is a must
All in all you'll pick it up doing two things above all else - practising a lot, and listening to other music a lot, and when I say listen, I mean literally de-constructing it into all it's different pieces in your head.
Nobody gets it straight away, nobody even gets it quickly really. So as long as you don't get frustrated by your early attempts and keep going, you'll get there eventually
As for labels, I wouldn't worry about them whatsoever
Just try and make music that you genuinely enjoy listening to, and if it's any good, trust me, labels will come to you
If you've any more questions, I'll try help you out 
Good for piano's and weird sounds in the crank package. 
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