I have the big Ranger 1100w/s pack and head, too. It's a fine system, very powerful, but also very heavy and a pain to carry around and set up by myself. Light quality is excellent. The head has a non-standard umbrella shaft mount. I also have a ton of old Dynalite stuff.
If I had to start totally from scratch, I would buy three or four of the Dynalite Baja units. These are inexpensive monolights with a built in battery pack, a standard mount for modifiers, and 600w/s of power. They are not at all expensive, but I was able to compare them side-by-side with the Profoto B1 units at a conference last summer, and they compared pretty well. Of course the Profotos are better -- those things could survive reentry into the atmosphere all by themselves. But I could almost get four of the Bajas for the price of one B1. Yes, they are only 600w/s, but for me that is generally plenty (but I am not trying to kill direct sunlight).
I do prefer battery powered units these days -- it's so much easier than running hundreds of feet of extension cords or bringing a generator. Set up a light stand, put the flash head on top, add a modifier, and start shooting.
For $5K I could get the flash units, stands, softboxes, various reflectors, several of the radio controllers (in case one dies), extra batteries, chargers, a big rolling case, etc., and still have money left over. If I drop a flash and it breaks into pieces, they are cheap enough to just buy another one.
