jnh@ecemwl.ncsu.edu (Joseph N. Hall) (11/18/89)
I received my Finale 2.0 upgrade a few days ago, and I have to say I am much happier with it than 1.2 and (especially!) 1.0. The manuals are MUCH more readable, MUCH more lucid, and MUCH easier to find things in. I only realized how much of a drag the old manuals really were when I started browsing through the new ones. It does seem to run faster in general. I haven't had a chance to try some manipulations on larger scores; Finale 1.x became intolerable on 68000 Macs when you whipped out the Mass Mover on any moderately sized score, say, 10 staves by 50-100 bars. I'll be very interested to see how the new, improved version stacks up, and also whether save/load for larger files is faster, too. The MIDI tool is fun, too. I'm looking forward to trying out Finale as a sequencer (of sorts), which is now a much more practical idea. I kind of wish they had included a "Blob View" or something similar (just blobs or lines for notes, like plain sequencers) to facilitate this; the screen update time is still a nuisance, even though it is somewhat faster than in 1.2. And, get this, there is even an explanation of (gasp!) Executable Shapes. Kind of takes the mystery out of it, alas ... :-) At the new price ($600?) Finale 2.0 is heads over its competition. I don't think any cheaper notation program has greater utility/$, except maybe for DMCS. I think the folks at Coda are on the right track with Finale, and that they have shown excellent responsiveness to their users' requests and needs with the release of 2.0. They had me wondering for a while, though ... No affiliation with Coda, except as a (generally) satisfied customer. v v sssss|| joseph hall || 4116 Brewster Drive v v s s || jnh@ecemwl.ncsu.edu (Internet) || Raleigh, NC 27606 v sss || SP Software/CAD Tool Developer, Mac Hacker and Keyboardist -----------|| Disclaimer: NCSU may not share my views, but is welcome to.