Martin, I agree. Sibelius has a program that is called "Student 6" which is about $82 US on Amazon. Colo, the reason I suggest it is because I have Finale and have used those lower cost and free products. And for simple note entry with nothing like measure markers, articulations, etc the lower and free options would suffice. However, in my writing I need those tools in addition to lyric writing and others. Take Lyrics for example. In the lower end as well as Finale if you are using several verses and have a couple of notes that reach above the staff, they will crash into the lyrics on the line above. Very frustrating for me.

Again, you need to visualize what are the essentials for your needs.

I like BIAB's notation. I like the way it slices the measure into quarters for you. The only thing that bothers me is that I need to constantly clean up the notes after my first note in each measure because it automatically fills in the complete measure. I know there must be a way to remove that. I just have not had the time to find it. All in all, it is an above average (better than Finale) notation program. No offense to the Finale users out there. Just my experience and opinion speaking

RickeG