[ejwells]

No, that's not the consensus at all.

PTLE v8 (and PT 9) both come with a bunch of plug-ins and VIs as stock items.
Stock plug-ins/instruments:
1-Band EQ III
4-Band EQ III
7-Band EQ III
AIR Chorus
AIR Distortion
AIR Dynamic Delay
AIR Enhancer
AIR Ensemble
AIR Filter Gate
AIR Flanger
AIR Frequency Shifter
AIR FuzzWah
AIR KillEQ
AIR Lo-Fi
AIR MultiChorus
AIR Multi-Delay
AIR Nonlinear Reverb
AIR Phaser
AIR Reverb
AIR Spring Reverb
AIR StereoWidth
AIR Talkbox
AIR Vintage Filter
Celemony Melodyne Essential
Chorus
Click
Compressor/Limiter
D-Verb
DC Offset Removal
De-Esser
Delay
DigiReWire
Dither
Duplicate
Eleven Free
Expander/Gate
Extra Long Delay II
Flanger
Gain
Invert
Lo-Fi
Long Delay II
Maxim
Medium Delay II
Multi-Tap Delay
Normalize
Ping-Pong Delay
Pitch
Pitch Shift
POWr Dither
Recti-Fi
Reverse
SansAmp
Sci-Fi
Signal Generator
Short Delay II
Slap Delay II
Time Compression Expansion
Time Shift
TL AutoPan
TL InTune
TL MasterMeter
TL Metro
Trim
Vari-Fi
Included Virtual Instruments and Audio Content:
Boom drum machine and sequencer
DB-33 tonewheel organ emulator with rotating speaker simulation
Mini Grand acoustic grand piano
Vacuum monophonic vacuum tube synthesizer
Xpand!2 multitimbral synth and sample workstation
Structure Free sample player (RTAS)
FXpansion BFD Lite acoustic drum module
8GB of loops from Big Fish Audio
M-Audio Torq LE DJ Software

The 003 Factory is an 003/LE 8 package with an additional 12 or so plug-ins on a pre loaded iLok.
Factory Bundle Plug-ins:
Bomb Factory Classic Compressors (MC77, BF-2A, BF-3A, Fairchild Bundle)
Cosmonaut Voice
Soundreplacer
JOEMEEK SC2T Photo Optical Compressor
JOEMEEK VC5T Meequalizer
TL Everyphase
Moogerfooger Bundle
Tel-Ray Variable Delay
Voce Spin
Voce Chorus/Vibrato

The 003 Factory Complete is an 003/PTLE 8 package with the additional above mentioned plug-in package on an iLok, plus the Complete Production Toolkit 1, which adds a bunch more stuff, including yet MORE plug-ins, like TL Space, DINR, Eleven LE, etc., and adds track count and other funtions like Digi Translator, DV Toolkit, etc. Complete Production Toolkit:
Up to 7.1 surround mixing capabilities
128 mono or 64 stereo simultaneous tracks @ 48kHz; 96 mono or 48 stereo tracks @ 96kHz
Includes over $2,650 in plug-ins
Eleven LE ($395 value)
Structure LE ($149 value)
Smack! LE ($395 value)
Hybrid 1.5 ($249 value)
TL Space Native Edition ($495 value)
Digidesign X-Form ($495 value)
DINR LE ($495 value)
Multi-track Beat Detective rhythm extraction, analysis, and correction tool
DigiBase Pro full-featured file management tool
DigiTranslator 2 for import/export of OMF, AAF, and MXF files
Time Code and Feet + Frames functions
Powerful editing and session management features
Pro Tools MP3 Option for exporting MP3s using original Fraunhofer MP3 Encoding algorithm