Don't know anything about Homestudio, but I would imagine it will work for home use and Shure mic will work just fine, they make very high quality mics for direct to disk digital recording.
I use cakewalk pro audio and have a seperate mixer hooked up through my computer that handles the mics, and it works very well. Don't know about anything other then pro audio though.
slickdadd pro audio and sonar are virtually the same product, Sonar has some advanced looping capabilities built in for on the fly editing and mixing that pro audio doesn't have. Other than that they are the same product.
Oh Slickdadd, what type? Brand? of mixer do you have, I'm new to all this... It's a birthday present for my wife.