i use it mainly for "cheating".....its great for just throwing loops together, cutting, rearranging the loops, applying copious amounts of effects until the loops sound nothing like the original. This is all re-wired from Cubase SX3 where i will then add the drums and synths and final arrangement.

Ableton is awesome for loops, and although ive never played a live pa set i can clearly see the sonic potential behind it. Personally, i use it mainly for manipulating loops, but i never got my head around using it as a full out sequencer. It is always rewired. Having said that, Ableton is very cpu hungry when rewired, but its good it has that RAM button where you can stream the audio files directly from ram so it wont tax the computer.