When I was looking for an inexpensive music notation package a couple years ago, I downloaded trial versions of NoteWorthy Composer, Melody Assistant and Muse, along with a few others whose names escape me. Since the version of MA I tried was 1.2, I thought I'd best have another look before commenting on it. So I downloaded the latest trial version last night. It installed and runs without problems. The appearance is certainly improved over the older version, but I still find it an unituitive program. I couldn't find a way to make it print more than 3 measures to a line without physically narrowing every bar in a piece with my mouse. I also dislike the fact that music entry is entirely with the mouse - you click on a note of the correct duration on a toolbar, then click at the location on the staff where you want to place it. Same for ornaments, clefs, time signatures, etc. It seems that many tasks which are accomplished by global settings in other programs require fine tuning of each occurrence in MA.

Although the price is certainly inexpensive, I still think NoteWorthy composer is a better value at almost three times the price. I certainly haven't delved into all the possibilities of NoteWorthy, but I've printed music which rivaled the appearance of many of the professionally printed songbooks I have.

BTW, John, your review of Muse seems to have disappeared from the FAQ, but I believe you mentioned something about not being able to print out anything with the trial version. As I remember, the downloaded file comes with several features turned off so you can "play" with the program all you want, then when you're ready you can turn on a 30 day trial period which enables the missing functions, but times out in 30 days. I was able to print by doing this, but I still found NoteWorthy's output the best of the lot.