alanyost
 Re Sibelius:
 
That could be.  Don't recall the fine print when I bought it---will check into it but I probably let the thing lapse, if there was a lapse clause in there somewhere.  

The mandatory Avid Application Manager complains quite loudly when you do. Unless you were on a version older than 7.5 I guess, but in that case it's been years since you updates and yes, you'll have to buy yourself in again for 220 or so.

Yeah, I tried to upgrade Sibelius yesterday to 8.5  from 8.4.2 and it said I was 'expired'.  Getting "unexpired" is now $299.00  since I am a couple months past some deadline.  So, I just upgraded Finale  2012 to version 25 for half as much (and got a free virtual piano in the process).  I can use either program,  Sibelius is just a bit more user friendly than Finale.  There is also a freeware/open source notation program called Muse 2 that's pretty good.

Finale 25 (or just Finale as it is now called) is very cool.  Lots of new stuff and I have it Re-wired into Sonar for easy access.

Or perhaps you could consider SONAR Professional. 
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Versions

I missed out on upgrading my 1972 Pinto to a 1997 F-100 Pickup. Now I'd have to pay full price. That's ridiculous. Ya?

Could do that, but will just stay with X3 since its fine for what I do. I've usually waited about 3 years to move up. Just missed the boat this time. Was just surprised by the change in the way they and now Avid are doing business. Really surprised as well by all the responses I got to my inquiry here , mostly helpful but even some tacky sarcasm from a few.

FWIW, we'll soon be running a special campaign for SONAR X3 customers to upgrade to the latest versions of SONAR - hope to kick off mid-June...

Is the special campaign still a possibility?

For whatever the worth, if you DO get an upgrade offer at some level of discount to come up to Platinum, I HIGHLY encourage you to also pick up Lifetime Updates, if it is available to you at that time.
 
It was a 1-time $199 charge at the time, for all future updates to Platinum, and Platinum has LITERALLY been updated once a month for more than a year now, so not only would you continue to get monthly fixes and features, you would not have to pay what used to be a $199 upgrade fee to X4, X5, and so on,  it's just Platinum now, so JUMP on any chance to add Lifetime Updates if you DO decide to come up to Platinum.
 
You can download a 30-day free trial now - and while it won't have the 3rd-party plugins and such, you will be able to test out the engine and the amazing new features of the User Interface - they really have done an amazing job with it.
 
Bob Bone
 

Yes, still working on setting up the campaign. We switched our ecommerce provider - yesterday - in fact, and we're back to defining the parameters of this campaign to reach out to people who missed the boat on LTU as well as our campaign before switching to our new pricing policy.