everyone says vees take ages to set up and loads of maintenence, but in my experience (and I am a long time vee user) is that they don't require any more maintenance as my mates maggies/disks
I run cane creek calipers and xt levers, with odyssy brake line cable and heatsink pads. but i have run a full deore set up before and that worked pretty decent.
I good (cheap) setup would be
deore caliper
xt levers
linear slic cable
heatsink pads
plus if you grind your rim and use heatsinks or plaz, then there is no reason why it shouldn't be as good as your maggie.
when out riding yesterday tim (drevil) broke his maggie lever (snapped the body the fat b*****d haha) and we tried to get spares, but we couldn't so that kinda messed up the ride. but if that had been me, i would have been able to get spares from any bikeshop and i kinda like that about vees.
Mike