Reason and Cubase is your friends, allthough they not excactly free. *cough* there's way to try them as well though hehe. I don't think that there's any good freebie programs really, I doubt it.
think that answers that 
How could I try them? By the way, has anyone used the real Finale or Sibelius? Are they any good, or is one better than the other, etc?
My band director really wants Sibelius so it must be good, and my Percussion Director uses Finale, and he really enjoys it. He's able to take and scan a single piece of sheet music with all the parts on it at once, sperate it, and print out pieces for individual instruments. That's just one of the many features I've heard of!
]]>I use special programs that find me what I need....if you get me.
BitTorrent = Bad
]]>Anywho.... I mostly use Acid 2.0, its fun to play around with (recording your voice then looping it or put effects on it), but It wouldn't be good by itself if you wanted to make straight up notes. Acid is good for editing and adding effects to notes and sounds. I would suggest making music with some other program, and then taking that file and messing around with it in Acid.
Fruity Loops lets you kinda write music...
Cakewalk Music Creator 2 is good for recording your voice, but I haven't really done much else with it...
Thats all I can think of...
]]><_<
>_>
]]>Voot voot,
Tater
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