In answer to the first post, if you've got the chance of getting a 309 for £100 Judas Beast, I would definately say buy the f**ker, even though I've only been using mine for a few days so far. (especially if it has the 3 expansion cards fitted)
I paid "230 and I suppose I could have got one for quite a bit less, but the guy I got it from had 250 ratings and 100% positive feedback, so I reckoned he was quite kosher. I'm always paranoid about buying stuff off Ebay, so I'd rather pay a wee bit extra and have a bit more peace of mind!!!!!!

As far as the machine goes, one of the reasons I wanted one was that I'd been thinking of getting something like an Electribe or a Roland MC-505, cause the programming of percussion is probably the one part of production that I struggle with the most. It just doesn't come intuitively to me and I don't like using pre made loops, so I thought it was worth spending a small amount on something like the 309 to experiment with and muck about with, although hopefully, I will get a lot of use of it with my setup. I suppose you could say it sounds a wee bit dated, I suppose it's quite and old machine, but it's not like I'm ever gonna get fed up of listening to 909 Kicks etc. It is quite banging and I always fee l that hardware just seems to sound fatter than VST's but I don't know if that's just psychological!!!!!
As for the other sounds, I suppose you might get bored with it eventually with it having limited sounds and no sampler, but it's just so tweakable, I love it already.

Buy it!!!!