The trial doesn't lose any functionality after the 30 days, but your conscience should cut in at around that point. Reaper is excellent, a huge amount of features at a very sensible price. When it came to actually parting with money though, I opted for Mixcraft from Acoustica (
http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/ similar price to Reaper, cheaper if you can find an online 20% off code). It doesn't do as many things as Reaper, but does more than enough for most people and in what I found to be a much simpler way, much less of the "I know what I want to do and I know you can do it...but how???". Suggest you download their trial and give it a go as well. I tried many other products, but in the end it was down to these two.