Frustrations with Finale

Reformatting? That seems drastic itself. I've had no issues at all with my computer apart from Finale, and it would force me to re-setup everything from scratch. I'm thinking of trying one last reinstall for Finale, but I can never remember all the little things you have to do to get everything set up correctly, especially with the GPO in the equation. Is there someone who could walk me through it? MakeMusic has always been less than helpful for that, I've even talked to support people who clearly did not want to talk with me.

Sibelius is prettier and more user friendly, but Finale offers better playback.
Finale is catching up on the first count though with each update.

*runs and hides from hard core Finalists*

Johann-

The scrolling playback feature is directly related to the video card.

Have you updated the drivers for your video card and soundcard(while you are at it)?

Ideally you should defrag your harddrive much more than once a year. There is no reason not to defrag at least once a week.

Finale is complex software that is taxing on a system - it will only perform as well as the system that it is asked to perform upon.

As far as Sibelius vs. Finale - I have used both. Like any software there are unique Sibelius issues that you would encounter.
There is no such thing as perfect, bug-free, software.

Originally Posted by johannhowitzer

Reformatting? That seems drastic itself. I've had no issues at all with my computer apart from Finale, and it would force me to re-setup everything from scratch. I'm thinking of trying one last reinstall for Finale, but I can never remember all the little things you have to do to get everything set up correctly, especially with the GPO in the equation. Is there someone who could walk me through it? MakeMusic has always been less than helpful for that, I've even talked to support people who clearly did not want to talk with me.

In all fairness to them, I can see why they might have rolled their eyes when you relayed the problem, because the bug you are describing is non-reproducible. That is to say, there's no route for them to find out what's causing the underlying issue, much less fix it. It's a non-starter, really. That's not to say it excuses poor customer relations.

Reformatting is drastic, but very effective. Have you ever done it before? Assuming you can locate your original Windows disc (which for a lot of people is the biggest hurdle to overcome...), it's really very simple. You can back up all your data onto portable media (DVD, external HDD etc.) along with installers for apps you use, any exported settings for those apps, etc. All in all, you can finish up within 3-4 hours, including time taken to download the plethora of Windows updates implicated in the usage of a vanilla Windows installation. I think iannis' suggestion regarding video card drivers is also a good one, however - one possibility might be to reinstall them.

In all fairness to them, I can see why they might have rolled their eyes when you relayed the problem, because the bug you are describing is non-reproducible. That is to say, there's no route for them to find out what's causing the underlying issue, much less fix it. It's a non-starter, really. That's not to say it excuses poor customer relations.

They didn't roll their eyes when I relayed the bug information, they rolled their eyes when I asked for a walk-through on setting up the GPO through Finale, which is pretty hairy but very reproducible.

I've reformatted several times. I don't know where my Windows XP disc is, my brother might.

Video card is NVidia GeForce 4, recently updated driver (which made Neverwinter Nights stop working, part of why I started playing WoW). It is a slightly old card but has never caused trouble with any advanced graphics from games etc., so it weirds me out that it would have a problem with moving a simple line across the screen. Any idea what makes it start happening?

I understand it wouldn't be perfect, but I've heard Sibelius is a bit more user-friendly. How is its interface for the GPO, compared to Finale? Finale makes plugging in the GPO a terrible chore.

Edit: Yeah, "more user friendly" is exactly what Mark said. Knew I heard that somewhere. *slap*

I would caution you against taking all the "Sibelius is prettier" comments too seriously. Having used both fairly extensively, I can say that while Sibelius' actual note-entry and page flow interface is better, it makes anything in the way of sequencing and sound library integration something of a pain.

For anything 2007 or later, integrating GPO is as easy as putting the library's DLL file (from the install directory where you put GPO) into the folder called C:\Program Files\Finale 200*\FinaleVST\ and then selecting it from the MIDI setup menu.

Try out the Sibelius demo and see what you think - the interface will either seem great or it will really piss you off, transitioning from Finale. Give it a chance though, if it does annoy you, it just takes some getting used to. Some people find it more intuitive than Finale's methods, others find it less so...either way, trying out the demo will help you figure out which category you fall under.

I might check back later, but my class is over right now so I have to run.

Yes, actually

Both Sibelius and Finale have trial versions, don't they? Just try Sibelius out! this is what demo/trial versions are for!

Both are highly professional as it seems and you can't decide much unless you toy with them (and you already know Finale).

I also can't find out about any serious bugs people have run into through a trial version.

I'm going to try to enlist the help of someone on here (maybe Marius, dunno if he'll have the time) in reinstalling Finale and getting the GPO re-setup. Really don't want to tackle it myself, I always forget some element of the setup or get something wrong. This time I'll write down the steps so I can do it myself if it needs to be done again. This will at least be a quick temporary fix and I can get back to orchestrating, and think some more about whether to switch or not.

Mainly I just need something that WORKS right now. We have a deadline.

I'll help you out. Hopefully it can wait until the weekend though; I'm in the middle of premiering a play this end of the week. You know how to reach me, either way.