Wow! John has the best price, and, from looking at the map samples, it does a fine job. Can it export to .png, .gif, and .jpg formats? Those are the three important (in addition to PDF, in my opinion) formats. If it can do that, it is the best value.
I use Illustrator, also, and love the results. It does appear, however, that John's maps look very similar to my results. If it can output the necessary formats, I will recommend it to new mappers, instead of Illustrator. Layering is important (Turbo-CAD can do this), whichever program you choose.
Digital maps are certainly the way to go, and all examples shown here are so much better than any hand-drawn, or combination of satellite images and lines drawn on top. Hiding the satellite image is much better than leaving it visible. Too much clutter. Hand-drawn can't turn it off, unless they trace on a separate sheet.