The only thing you've gotta be careful of with shareware stuff is it might not track in time properly.
Before I got Cubase I tried a Mac program for recording 8 tracks at once. It worked great but the different tracks would occasionally go out of sync with each other...almost like the author of the program hadn't figure out a way to lock them together.

Another consideration is future stuff. If you record with a shareware ACME program and come up with a really cool tune... you many have no way of transferring your audio files over to a decent program later on if you ever want to upgrade. ie, you might be able to export .wav files etc... but you'd lose all your mixing and track assignment info.

Just a suggestion, but if you really want to get into recording, you're way better off getting a decent but basic program to begin with and upgrading it later.
(only my own opinion tho :)