Firstly, to play piano you'll need more than 49 keys. you can get by with 76 keys as a beginner.
Secondly, to have the cool electronic sounds/effects you'll need a synthesizer, not an arranger keyboard like the PSR series. Korg has nice electronic sounds, you'll want to consider Korg above yamaha and roland in this department. with a budget of $500 you can land an old X-series, T-series or N-series or the older M1. only the X, T and N series come in 76 key variants.
If you go down the midi controller route, which is becoming more common these days, you'll need a laptop to go along with your midi controller keyboard. you can get by with a Pentium 4 and 512MB RAM. Lots of freeware VSTs out there to use, and they're getting better all the time.
KVR: Virtual Instruments, Virtual Effects, VST Plugins, Audio Units (AU), DirectX (DX), Universal Binary Compatibility - Audio Plugin News, Reviews and Community is the place to go.
Software is certainly more powerful than any of the old hardware synthesizers mentioned above. Moreover, it allows you to streamline and customise your rig. hardware synthesizers come with a lot of other sounds which you may not be interested in, and you may end up liking only a handful of sounds. whereas if you go down the software route, you can pick and choose what to install and use. On the down side, you'll need to muster the discipline to learn the basic technical aspects of setting up your computer for audio.
help!axiom49 or PSR?
