My First Post!!
First thing to say about e-kits is they are good, you will see a lot of arguments about acoustic vs electric, but its a null and void argument, someone said to me once that you can think of it as a different instrument with the same technique, its like comparing a piano to a keyboard.
The alesis stuff is fine, its all I could afford at the time (I started in october), and my budget didnt even come close to a second hand nackered roland, so I went alesis, its been good fun actually, changing and upgrading bits and bobs. Roland and yam will give you more durability. but for me it was cheap or not learn at all.
In terms of hardware roland use the standard platform of stereo (trs) jacks and piezo sensors, as do alesis, same sensors inside, roland have a better build quality so they will stand a beating for longer.
Sensitivity wise, all pads are sensitive, its a miss understanding that the mid/lower end pads arent sensitive, the reason they appear to be less sensitive is down to the drum module and the trigger processor in it, alesis kits for example have adjustable sensitivity and cross talk and all that but you are only changing it a small amount, so you never get the best out of the pads, where roland are more fine tuned.
Linking it up to a computer is easy. I dont use my original drum module anymore, I have my pads linked to a trigger IO which is linked to my laptop using a usb straight from the trigger io (its still midi over usb). I then have addictive drums running stand alone on the laptop, and I am running at 6ms of latency, 6ms equates to 2 meters, so if you hit an acoustic snare its like being 2 meters away from it in terms of delay. Of course the sounds are awesome doing it that way, and also recording is really easy as you never have to go analog once, nor worry about any input gains.
If you want some details and help on setting addictive drums up, let me know, I can give you all the information on that.
The other thing about electric drums is while theres some things that arent the same as acoustic, theres also a lot of fun things you can do, and some fun sound banks to play with, they can be great fun.
Hope this was a little helpful, my youtube link will hopefully be in the signature at the bottom which is me using an alesis dm6 pads, through an alesis trigger io, and through addictive drums, if you want an example. Sorry for my drumming though, i am very new.
Any questions please just ask