As an anecdotal input to the discussion, I had a nice program 15 years ago that did everything I needed, and a few years back I used it to put together a "session book" for the local Irish types that was reasonably well received.

Unfortunately, it will not run on WinXP. (It started being cranky when I moved it from Win95 to Win98.) I've been able to open the old files using the program in WinXP, but all attempts to edit, add, subtract, etc crashed the program.

I have found a program that will open the old files and allow me to save in a "new modern format." All recently installed and working, so I decided I'd take a quick look at how many files I have that "need" to be converted.

13,383 tune score files on one hard drive. I don't think I'll look at the other two drives. (I was expecting maybe 1,200).

And I think I'll wait until I need one before I worry about converting, now that I know I can. (I do have .jpg, .mid, and .pdf of the important ones.)

The point here is, I guess, that if you're going to set up to do some notation, you may want to look at the potential longevity of the program you select, and the likelihood that it will be around through the next few years of your musical life. It's amazing how much stuff can accumulate in reasonably short order, and even if only a few occasionally need a tweak or two, it's very inhibiting to one's creative juices to be stuck with an inadequate (or broken) program.

And even if a program is "free," you'll spend some time and effort getting it to do what you expect, so it's worth looking for a program that allows at least a little growth before you do your learning.

The voice of experience (or maybe just procrastination).

John