I looked at a few early this year, and it depends what you want to do with it. I settled on two.

If your main interest is in tunes - single melody line - then MusicEase (www.musicease.com) is quick to learn, easy to enter notes, reads ABC and plays music OK. It produces quite good scores, although you have very limited control over the format. I have used it to print 4-part harmony (hymn type), but it was quite hard work.

Harmony Assistant is all-singing, all-dancing, but is much more complex and therefore takes longer to learn. Note entry is a little more cumbersome, but I've come to terms with it. It writes ABC as well as reading it, although the files for more complex music are not always read by other packages. It's biggest strength is in printing scores - near professional quality.

Lyric entry is fine in both. I use MusicEase for most folk-type songs, and Harmony Assistant when I want to produce scores for a choir. Each of them is about £50, €70, $90.

Phil