I looking to get into flash development, and I've been looking into various software.

Can someone please tell me what software packages (as a newbie) that I should evaluate. For example, I can't see spending $700 - $1000 on Macromedia products, when Swish Max is $99. But then, I'm not sure how much extra functionality that Flash MX is going to give me, over Swish.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks,
Eric