I wonder if I can borrow a bit of help from all you experienced users?

I've had Finale PrintMusic for quite a while and hate it. I've just looked up the dialogue between me and their support team, it's many pages long.

One problem was some strange glitch in the registration process - whereby no matter what I did the darn 'days left' box would re-appear at some point, and files would start to go missing etc. This was something to do with Intel Macs and whether you had a firewire drive attached or some such nonsense. The system was obviously way too clever for its own good. I remember spending ages downloading updates and deleting files and all sorts of odd activities involving other programmes but eventually finished the music I was composing. Guess what - I fired it up just now and it told me the software was not registered - but when I went to re-register (yet again) it told me I couldn't because it was. Same old loop as four years ago.

The other problem was that, unlike Cubase (which I no longer have), the software would not talk to my printer - which was just a bog standard Epson (I've got a different one now, but it's probably the same). They insisted that I needed a sophisticated printer that could handle their fonts because they won't offer a tiff or jpeg Save As. I had to use screen grabs in the end.

I'm just starting work on a really big composing project (opera) and, to my regret, I need to be able to do manuscripts again.

Is it worth my while fighting with MakeMusic yet again to try to resolve these (and probably have to buy yet another expensive update), or should I bite the bullet and go for a new Cubase (which has probably changed out of all recognition in the last 15 years) or Sibelius and a massive learning curve - for which I don't really have time.

Or is there something else (not notepad, please - that was horrid) that will do the job?

Thanks

Tom