Someday I'll go to a live setup, but that requires me to actually buy an expensive tube amp and microphone and I'm poor.
My experience with digital modeling is limited to GuitarRig, Amplitube, Revalver, and Line6 stuff. And to be fair, I stopped using software modeling a long time ago (talking GR2, and RevalverMKII or something like that, 5+ years ago).
GR always had some amazing clean tones and I might give it another try now that it's been a few years, but its high gain stuff was shit. Total shit.
In fact, I never found usable high gain tones on software modelers. Ever.
My PodXT has been my main modeler for years now, and it more than gets the job done. Some absolutely amazing cleans, and I love the rhythm tones I get out of it. The leads leave something to be desired, but I make it work (I don't play much lead anyway, so...).