Marius

@cygnusdei: Finale, as of 2009, now fully supports all VST plugin instruments. It was able to work with most major packages before too, but it wasn't particularly stable in doing so — 2009 has been rock solid for me so far though, and I really put it to the test with intense plugin usage.

Sibelius 5 has lots of great features (that idea bar thing is pretty neat) but I've always found the experience of using Finale much more straight-forward and robust than Sibelius, even though the two packages are basically the same thing with different aesthetics and slightly different functionality. You basically can't go wrong with either so it's more a matter of use preference than actual functionality.

Even though I primarily use Finale, I always try out the latest Sibelius version too in case I'm swayed to switch over — I like to be open-minded about things because they're both such awesome pieces of software.