Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Rocky Road wrote: [snip] not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow. Even if Finale lift their game they will need to win over the Retailers and Trade Show marketers. It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down! My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new equipment, including computers in the music department. The notation software on those computers? Sibelius. My question to MakeMusic is: WHY?! How could you let that happen? Continue paying attention to SmartMusic, if you want to, but don't give the notation market away to Sibelius, as it appears you are doing. The inclusion of GPO (a subset, they admit, which will probably force many of us to spring for the additional soundsets, once we realize the limitations of the sounds included) may well overpower the computers of those educational installations which do use Finale, to say nothing of the casual users who may not be computer-savvy. Just look at all the problems discussed by GPO users on this list, which I consider to be populated mostly by people who are very computer-literate and who STILL have had problems getting things to work correctly. Trying to get a school computer installation to increase their RAM so that they can utilize the GPO sounds (this seems to be the number-one suggestion when new GPO users aired their problems and complaints) is not as simple as going down to the local CompUSA and buying more ram. Even in the US, Sibelius has found a way to twist retailers' arms to get their product front and center (spiffs, buybacks, bonuses, deeper discounts, whatever). Just visit www.jwpepper.com and look at their e-print capabilities. The only software product mentioned on their homepage is the Scorch viewer (Sibelius' free viewer) which serves as the basis of their e-print program. Whatever happened to Finale's capabilities in this direction? All it takes is for a potential new user to work with jwpepper's e-print services, download the Scorch viewer, realize it's a Sibelius product and decide to go with the full Sibelius product since it did such a great job with the e-print stuff. Why isn't Finale working in this direction? From the jwpepper home page click on the Music Technology link in the left-hand column, and you are presented with a listing of 4 products, two of them Sibelius products, Finale and a classroom training product from Alfred Publications. Why is Sibelius listed FIRST? What did they do to gain that product placement? Why did Finale let that happen? Why doesn't MakeMusic come up with a counteroffer which would place Finale first? SmartMusic isn't even mentioned on this first page! Click on the Accompaniment Software link in the left column from the Music Technology main page, and the first product again is NOT a MakeMusic product, it's Band-in-a-Box (I agree it should be first, it's a terrific product!) Where is MakeMusic's marketing department in all this? Probably too busy sitting in the company's development team meetings, dictating what they think their marketplace wants. Everybody knows that product placement is a major factor in gaining market share, yet MakeMusic seems incapable of gaining product placement which will increase its sales. Visit www.zzounds.com and click on the ComputerMusic tab and scroll down to the Other Software line, where they list notation software. The only 2 products shown are Sibelius products. It turns out those are the only notation products they sell. Why? Visit www.musiciansfriend.com and enter Software in the search and as you click NEXT to go through the pages listing their software, you get to Sibelius products before getting to Finale products, although they DO market Finale products. But anybody who is just investigating what is out there may well stop at the Sibelius products. Why are they listed ahead of Finale products? I can go on and on, but it only frustrates me more and more. Where is MakeMusic's marketing department and what are they doing? -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Rocky Road wrote: My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-) Indeed it does! There has to be some sort of tradeoff... :) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically. Finale is close to dead I think the secondary-school educational market here in Australia, Notepad notwithstanding. Sibelius has won the battle there: and I can tell this from marking/judging student compositions from around the place. Partly this is because the Australian distributors of Finale have employed a part-time Sibelius advocate/tech support who is outstanding. [snip] I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius. I have done the same thing at Sydney Uni - the majority of students I deal with use Sibelius, until they do our Music Publishing course which is based upon Finale. I too get the why don't you teach Sibelius instead comments on a regular basis. From talking to the students, a sizeable proportion of them use cracked versions of Sibelius, which, being more powerful than Finale Notepad, yields them better results. While Finale Notepad is free, so are cracked versions of Sibelius. It is great to be able to tell students to download Finale Notepad though. For a lot of them, it's all they need anyway. And those who have bought the AUS$299 education priced Finale certainly seem to be happy enough. You (and I) might stick to Finale, but I don't think you are the typical education user (you make your own fonts for goodness sake!). The average B.Mus/B.Ed from UNSW or Sydney or Newcastle or the Crematorium are still not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow. Well, that's right, but for the time being, the Music and Music Ed students at Sydney Uni (and Melbourne Uni as well) will be using Finale for their coursework. So there's still going to be a few bastions around the place for a little while longer. Cheers Matthew -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.11/44 - Release Date: 8/07/2005 ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 08:34 AM 7/10/05 -0400, dhbailey wrote: It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down! My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new equipment, including computers in the music department. The notation software on those computers? Sibelius. The same happened here in Vermont. And the reason was absolutely clear: Sibelius (3, the last demo I have) comes up looking like music in no time, and responding to actions anywhere on the screen, no matter how unreasonable it might seem. You can play with it, put notes anywhere, and it invites fooling around. Finale doesn't invite playing around even now, and was thoroughly impossible when the switch to Sibelius was made. Sibelius is run in elementary schools, and is the successor to various other integrated music/notation packages here (Music Lab? Was that the name?). Go back to the transition a few years ago, and Finale was totally opaque for sixth graders. You couldn't teach music with Finale, but you could with Sibelius. Teachers could scrabble together worksheets in no time, but not in Finale. (And step-up packages won't gain the step-up, based on past experience.) Run even new versions of Sibelius and Finale side-by-side. Which one can you start plunking at and have it put music on the screen? Sibelius. Even with a template set to come up immediately, Finale wants you to be too informed first, almost like way back in the line editor days. Admittedly, Finale has gotten much better about being immediate, though it still insists (for example) that notes go into the measure in order, even in Simple entry. No playing around! Get to work! The thinking behind Finale is historical. Programs that have fallen by the wayside have not been able to rise above their history, and the same is happening with Finale. Graphire could have cleaned Finale's clock in both look and speed, and Sibelius would never have appeared -- but it was overpriced, used a dongle for protection, and didn't support Midi input/output. All three changed, but not until it was too late for Graphire. Now it's history. MakeMusic just might not have the resources to do a complete rethink of Finale, or even if they did, not have a sense of agreement on how to accomplish it. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 1:27 PM +1000 7/10/05, Rocky Road wrote: My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically. Let's not forget that this is also a matter of platform competition. Our (college) music department is 100% Mac, and always has been. We used to have a computer-assisted learning lab. Now, and for a number of years, incoming Freshmen are required to have Macs, encouraged to have iBooks that they can take to class, and required to have a certain suite of programs. (The Art Department also requires Macs, but most departments on campus including the entire College of Engineering and College of Business require Windows machines.) MakeMusic lost us as steady and reliable customers the year our incoming students had Macs with OS X, and Finale for OS X did not exist. This had absolutely nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with a complete missreading of the market and a complete failure to provide a product that was needed but not available. The history of our department, if anyone cares: We first adopted Professional Composer in about 1990, dreadful as it was. When MOTU replaced it with Mosaic we adopted that in about 1993 or 1994; steep learning curve for me, not a techno-geek in any way, but still the program I'm most comfortable with. Changed to Finale because it was the industry standard (now THAT was marketing hype!) in about 1998, and most students came to hate it except for the few who put the time into really learning it; they were also not techno-geeks, and simply couldn't figure out how to make it do what they needed. Were forced to drop Finale and adopted Sibelius the year Macs started shipping with OS X (2002??); much more positive student acceptance. When I say adopted, I mean that the school provided legal copies for all faculty members and required all music majors to purchase legal copies. Our department head (yes, there are definitely privileges!) is watching the market and would switch to a freeware or shareware program that can do what's needed in a second, if one ever comes along, to save our students and our department money. So far, it hasn't happened. And yes, playback is very, very important to students, although I have never used it myself. John -- John Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
John Howell wrote: MakeMusic lost us as steady and reliable customers the year our incoming students had Macs with OS X, and Finale for OS X did not exist. This had absolutely nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with a complete missreading of the market and a complete failure to provide a product that was needed but not available. Think about this for a moment. The native-OSX version of Finale should have been Finale 2003. That was an upgrade year weak on features like this one. Ever since the decision that year not to go OSX-native, MM has been behind the 8 ball on the Mac side. Yet given the light features list it should have been a no-brainer. That said, I still think Steve Jobs cut the knees out from under his developers by cutting off OS9 booting one year too soon. And it is a continuing pattern... -- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius. I have done the same thing at Sydney Uni - the majority of students I deal with use Sibelius, until they do our Music Publishing course which is based upon Finale. I too get the why don't you teach Sibelius instead comments on a regular basis. From talking to the students, a sizeable proportion of them use cracked versions of Sibelius, which, being more powerful than Finale Notepad, yields them better results. While Finale Notepad is free, so are cracked versions of Sibelius. Sadly, I have heard that a nearby State School teacher gives out cracked Sibelius to all his music elective students. Not something I'm about to do so I will stick with Finale Free. It is great to be able to tell students to download Finale Notepad though. For a lot of them, it's all they need anyway. Yes. Some of our students do HSC compositions on Fin Notepad Free and only bring it into Finale right at the end for some prettying up. And those who have bought the AUS$299 education priced Finale certainly seem to be happy enough. Three or four students here bought the full Finale last year, all because they had used the Free version first. And the $299 price is also for Tertiary and Schools - Sibelius charges AUD$499 for schools. -- Rocky Road - (David Stonestreet) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Robert Patterson schrieb: That said, I still think Steve Jobs cut the knees out from under his developers by cutting off OS9 booting one year too soon. And it is a continuing pattern... That may be the case, but Sibelius managed anyway, and by the looks of it will manage the move to Intel, too. That may well have to do with the fact that it is a) a younger application, and b) was made platform independent much earlier in it's development. However, as far as I am concerned, I don't care about all these excuses. Fact is Finale wasn't there when Sibelius was there, and I fear the same is going to happen again. Being a little more serious than I have been the last few days, I really do not want to give up Finale. There are a number of things where I almost certainly won't become very friendly with Sibelius. But MM really has to create _enthusiasm_ big time for Finale with 2k7 or I am absolutely convinced they will fail miserably in the course of 2k8 when the next Sibelius update is due. Unfortunately I believe that the yearly upgrade cycle cannot be broken until 2k7 comes out with a vastly improved feature set, simply because Sibelius 4 is here now, and Finale 2k6 is a pitiful upgrade in comparison. If MM manages to bring out a fantastic 2k7 I think there is hope. They may, however, still be under immense pressure to beat Sibelius 5. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 9:46, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: Run even new versions of Sibelius and Finale side-by-side. Which one can you start plunking at and have it put music on the screen? Sibelius. Even with a template set to come up immediately, Finale wants you to be too informed first, almost like way back in the line editor days. Admittedly, Finale has gotten much better about being immediate, though it still insists (for example) that notes go into the measure in order, even in Simple entry. No playing around! Get to work! I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Now, I don't know what Finale's default setup is -- I believe out of the box it defaults to the document setup wizard. I do not know if it defaults to simple entry or not. If it doesn't, then it would be a little harder than Sibelius. But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On Jul 10, 2005, at 2:48 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. Here's one very simplistic example: Say you have a piano part that's basically "two-beat"--that is, LH on 1 and 3, and RH on 2 and 4. You enter the LH notes first: note-rest-note-rest. Now the RH: In Finale, if you want notes on beats two and four, you have to enter rest-note-rest-note. In Sibelius you can just point the cursor to beat 2 and enter a note, then do the same for beat 4--no need to enter rests on beats 1 and 3--they are added automatically. In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. Lon Price, Los Angeles [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hometown.aol.com/txstnr/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 03:37 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. This was new in v.3, and a relief it was! Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 15:37, Lon Price wrote: On Jul 10, 2005, at 2:48 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. Here's one very simplistic example: Say you have a piano part that's basically two-beat--that is, LH on 1 and 3, and RH on 2 and 4. You enter the LH notes first: note-rest-note-rest. Now the RH: In Finale, if you want notes on beats two and four, you have to enter rest-note-rest-note. In Sibelius you can just point the cursor to beat 2 and enter a note, then do the same for beat 4--no need to enter rests on beats 1 and 3--they are added automatically. In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. To me, that's a drawback, rather than an advantage! Of course, I wouldn't use the mouse to enter music, in any case, but if I were, I'd want it to be as accurate as possible. How does Sibelius decide the granularity of the mid-measure note? What if I want a half note followed by an 8th rest followed by a dotted quarter? Can Sibelius do that with me clicking on the 2nd half of beat 3? If it can, then my bet is that an awful lot of people are going to end up with non-intended 8th rests in the middle of their measure, since in my experience, most users are very poor in terms of mouse accuracy. But, again, I don't see this so much as an advantage one way or the other in terms of ease of entering music -- it's just two different choices about a default behavior. Either way is going to get you entering music pretty quickly (or, as quickly as mouse clicking is ever going to get), and I don't see much difference in terms of ease of learning in getting notes on the page. Now, for getting notes *off* the page, that's a different story -- the Sibelius results come out better by default in terms of proper choice of layout sizes for staves/systems. Finale's do not. I did download the current version of Finale notepad and tried it out. It is somewhat better at this, but still makes the systems much too large. It does do a better job of spacing horizontally, though (I couldn't seem to get automatic note spacing turned back on in my copy of Finale). -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 05:48 PM 7/10/05 -0400, David W. Fenton wrote: I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Once you're there, which is far from obvious. Keep in mind that Sibelius always was ready to go, but not Finale. I was trying to account for the acceptance of Sibelius several years ago here in Vermont. But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). The main difference once you're there is that in Sibelius you can put notes anywhere in the measure, and the score gets added to and reformatted on the spot. Finale forces you to start at the beginning of the measure. And, as you say, the formatting is not bad in Sibelius and bad in Finale. Again, remember -- I'm talking about our schools. In terms of immediate usability, Sibelius was way ahead of Finale a few years ago. Finale is closer now, but still unacceptable because at this point it would have to be much better than Sibelius for the schools to transition from Sibelius *to* Finale. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 19:17, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: At 05:48 PM 7/10/05 -0400, David W. Fenton wrote: I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Once you're there, which is far from obvious. Keep in mind that Sibelius always was ready to go, but not Finale. I was trying to account for the acceptance of Sibelius several years ago here in Vermont. Well, the document setup wizard (which was copied from Sibelius, no?) has been around for about five years, hasn't it? But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). The main difference once you're there is that in Sibelius you can put notes anywhere in the measure, and the score gets added to and reformatted on the spot. Finale forces you to start at the beginning of the measure. Again, I see this as an advantage and not as a disadvantage! And, as you say, the formatting is not bad in Sibelius and bad in Finale. Again, remember -- I'm talking about our schools. In terms of immediate usability, Sibelius was way ahead of Finale a few years ago. Finale is closer now, but still unacceptable because at this point it would have to be much better than Sibelius for the schools to transition from Sibelius *to* Finale. I have always complained about the layout of the default files in Finale. The thing about Sibelius is that it seems to me to automatically adjust the sizing of the systems on the page based on what instruments you've chosen. This, it seems to me, is inherently possible because of the way staff/system layout is implemented, which allows it to be dynamic, whereas Finale's template-based approach and the method of storing and editing the sizing information makes it virtually impossible. This is also, it seems to me, why vertical spacing is something you have to futz around with in Finale, because of the way these things are implemented. I've said a million times, and for close to 10 years, that I think these basic problems are engineered into the file format of Finale and can only be fixed with a radical redesign. When page formatting was drastically overhauled a few years ago, it was basically all in the UI, and not in the way the data is stored, seems to me, and thus, there's not much further you can go with it. The result is that you end up with only a plugin-based response to it, rather than something that happens automatically. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
David (and then Darcy) wrote: If Finale doesn't start listening to its core users and stop dicking around with fancy playback issues, it's going to lose the entire educational and professional market, plain and simple. David, this is a baseless assertion. First, hardcore engravers don't drive sales of Finale. Second, what on earth makes you think the educational market isn't interested in playback? Third, Finale is only just now catching up to (and, in some was, surpassing) Sibelius in terms of playback capabilities. Sib has had it together on playback for a while now, which is why they were able to be innovative in other areas, like the new Dynamic Parts. My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically. So I would conclude that most music teachers who didn't have any previous notation software experience would end up as Sibelius uses here in Sydney. The only difference could be what software is being used in the Universities in around Sydney that offer Music Ed degrees (and I don't know what that is now - when I went through it was Notator Logic on Atari and Master Tracks Pro on a Mac Plus!) This school semester I even got a potential new parent asking why we didn't use Sibelius - they assumed it was what school's use (They had not ever heard of Finale!). I hear a lot of baseless comments among music teachers at other schools, and also among our own students (stemming from their private teachers) about how Sibelius is better - but when you dig deeper it nearly always comes down to what they heard off some sales rep or at a conference trade display rather than experience with both software packages. I don't at all mind that some (or many) people prefer Sibelius, but I hate when the marketing engines drive the buzz instead of reality. I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius. Later in the thread Matthew Hindson wrote: However unless they've integrated Scroll View into Sibelius, made articulations draggable, added handles to slurs and other items, add a graphics creator/editor and release a free Notepad version of Sibelius for my students, (amongst many other things) then I will for the time being stay put. The hours of frustration from these missing/malfunctioning items will not quite compensate for saved hours in linking revisions in parts to score, as tempting as it seems: though it is getting much closer... Finale is going to have to lift its game. Notepad free is also a clincher for me. To be able to tell all our elective students to go home an download for free something that will look just like the expensive software at school is a great bonus, and has been the prime reason that computer technology has caught on among our music students. Some of these students go on to buy the full Finale at the education price (currently AUD$299). I doubt many parents would have paid that without seeing its use first. You (and I) might stick to Finale, but I don't think you are the typical education user (you make your own fonts for goodness sake!). The average B.Mus/B.Ed from UNSW or Sydney or Newcastle or the Crematorium are still not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow. Even if Finale lift their game they will need to win over the Retailers and Trade Show marketers. -- Rocky Road - in Oz Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest, for a shining planet known as Earth. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
