There are any number of reasonably flexible, competent, and user-friendly notation programs - that will play back what you put in the score, print the score, and save a midi of it.

There are also a number of reasonably simple midi programs that will "save a score."

If the midi is your main concern, you need a midi program. If you mostly want scores you want a notation program. Either kind of program should do the playback.

LiK likes her "Print Music," while I've been using "Music Time Deluxe" simply because it's one of the few programs around that can import some "legacy" scores I made with another program that got swallowed up by the big guys. Both of those are from Coda, and neither is particularly a "recommendation;" but neither is really expensive and they work for us. (Coda Finale "competes" with Sibelius, but is also much more horsepower than you need for what you seem to want to do.)

You do NOT need Sibelius for much of anything unless you are:

1. A student (or music educator) who can get it really cheap.
2. You have more money than you can possible spend and enjoy paying off extortionists as a hobby.

It's a very good and very powerful program, but most people simply don't need all the "features." It also has a comparatively steep learning curve to figure out what you can turn off to do the simple stuff - and how to do it. Any decent program will require you to learn a little about how to run it, but Sibellius just has far too many "features" for most us simple-minded users.

Many music programs allow you to download a "trial version," and trying a few is a good idea.

If you really think you want Sibelius, you can get a free CD trial version at many music stores - especially those selling band/orchestra stuff. (An example of how unfriendly they are is that the trial versions of Sibelius disable the Help files, so it's difficult to tell whether it can do what you want, since you can't look up how the program wants you to do it. Ask about the work-around if you need it.)

John