Out of the box AE does not do particle effects easily. With plug ins like Particular it will better than anything because of the 3d capabilities of AE. A demo is easily found under the demos section of Adobes web site. If you ever want to work in the industry AE is the way to go. I have worked in television for several years now and I have never heard of Vision Lab Studio. So in the real world it will not get you far. However if all you want to do is your own stuff it looks like it can do some of the things that AE does with out the effort. Particle Illusion is just a particle generator and does not do compositing so while it is a great piece of software it needs something like AE to show its potential.
