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how worth it is it? how long does it take to download? how easy is it and what all are you able to do with it?

It's a quick download and I think it's pretty easy to use. But it is extremely simplified and scaled-back. It's good for jotting down some ideas, but if you have music of any significant complexity, it probably won't suffice.

I'd say get it (it's free) and see if you like the interface and feel of it. If you do, it might be worth getting one of the more advanced products from the Finale family. If you're a student, you can get good student deals on studica.com for this.

I'm a Finale user myself, but Sibelius is also a fine product and lots of people use and like their products as well - you may want to check them out too.

about complexity... how complex can you get? I want something very cheap that I can basically get good quality sheets of my compositions.

Score Writer 4 is $59 and it lets me do everything I want with it.

Complex as in key changes, meter changes, clef changes, tuplets... I don't believe Notepad allows you to change key/meter/clef midstream in a piece, and I'm not sure what kind of support it has for tuplets. Also the amount of articulations and layout options it has is very scaled down.

If the music you want to notate stays in one key, clef, and meter, and is relatively straightforward, this will suffice. Anything more complex than that, you should look into a more powerful tool.

the piece I'm trying to do does change clef just not key or meter... not yet, and I don't plan to... I guess I may just give it a trying though

Asherf,

Another program to look at is MagicScore Maestro. This one is under $70 and it let's you do quite a bit in terms of clef, key and meter changes.

Notepad is limited in terms of the number of staves it supports. Roughly a max of 1 - 2 pages.

Here's the link for this program's site:

http://www.musicaleditor.com/

You should be able to download a trial version.

Rich

The thing I found most frustrating with Finale Notepad is that it doesn't let you do grace notes (at least, not that I was ever able to discover). You have to call them 32nd notes and then deduct the value from other notes in the measure. (It forces you to have the correct total of beats in each measure...sheesh! )