Klarinet Archive - Posting 001132.txt from 2003/06
From: Karl Krelove <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Grrrr - silly software!
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 10:53:02 -0400
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lelia Loban [mailto:lelialoban@-----.net]
>
> I'm a Sibelius user in the USA. From comments on the Sibelius technical
> and musical chat sites (they're actually bulletin boards, not realtime
> chats--and I recommend them, btw), I get the impression that many Sibelius
> users in the USA are former Finale users. I think that Finale had a head
> start here, but Sibelius seems to be catching up, to the point where the
> company looks to me as if it's suffering from its own success, with
> inadequate personnel to deal with the volume of web site traffic. I've
> found the tech chat site to be the best place to ask questions.
<snip>
>
> Link to the chat sites:
> http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?groupid=3
>
Thanks for this tip. I've always gotten very quick responses to email
questions from the tech support department, but until this came up I haven't
really had a question for more than a year, so things may have changed. One
annoyance that requires contact with the support staff is the anti-piracy
scheme Sibelius has always used. CODA has dropped theirs and gone back
essentially to trusting its users not to pirate. Needing to contact Sibelius
every time something happens to require replacing the Windows registry
(upgrading the OS, recovering from a hard drive problem or a hard drive
replacement, etc.) is a nuisance. But they have always been very responsive
by phone and it has never been more than an annoyance for me.
> If you sent your e-mail to the webmaster address, don't be surprised if it
> goes unanswered or if you get nothing but a link to the FAQ. I
> got nothing
> better for several weeks when I had to sort out a simple error in
> my e-mail
> change of address that I should have been able to fix myself in about five
> seconds, if everything actually worked the way the FAQ said it
> worked. The
> tech chat site finally put me in touch with a staffer who fixed the
> problem.
>
<snip>
>
> About a year ago, while making up my mind which note processor to buy, I
> had a good opportunity to look at both Sibelius and Finale in action,
> thanks to a pianist and composer who plays in a trio with my husband. He
> let me look at the programs while the trio practiced. Each had advantages
> and disadvantages. For me, learning without an instructor, the extremely
> good Sibelius manual made the difference. The Finale
> instructions confused
> me. The Sibelius manual was written for musicians, not for
> people who know
> more about the computer than they do about music. I understood what I was
> reading, and could see that, by starting with the basics, I could begin
> using the program right away, then gradually learn more features as I
> needed them, the same way I learned word processing. I do love that
> program!
>
I suspect that what you say is true for many newcomers. For a long time
Finale was the standard in the U.S so many of us who began using notation
software early gravitated to it and learned to use it. It has become much
more user-friendly in its annually upgraded versions, especially recently,
which I attribute to the competition from Sibelius. I use both but have
always found I can work more easily in Finale because of all the learning
interference I run into between already learned Finale techniques and those
required in Sibelius. Sibelius may be easier and even perhaps more intuitive
(though I frequently don't find it so), but only if you're working from a
zero or nearly zero starting point. Since the last time I bought a packaged
product from Sibelius was version 1.1, I didn't know if they still packaged
a manual - CODA's is digital (as a PDF), which I find more useful because
it's searchable. Sibelius upgrades also come with extensive .pdf help files.
The competition has been good for CODA in terms of motivating improvements.
They are both very effective notation programs, and I for one wish them both
success so that each keeps the other on its toes.
Karl Krelove
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