Jeff, I think this basically has to do with two things… 1) What are you planning to write over, say, the next two years, and 2) do you have faith in Dorico from what you’ve seen so far? Personally, I reckoned that the release of Dorico was probably my last chance in life to witness a major development in music notation software, so I blindly decided to support it, and learn it, from day one. While I’ve never, for a second, regretted that, I was, from a productive and professional viewpoint of course disappoined. I had expected that it was a lot more feature complete than it was. Actually, although I’ve used it a lot, learning it, testing it, exploring it, I have not yet been able to use it for any of my professional work. E.g, if I had ventured to prepare a set of orchestral parts without cue notes, my clients would have turned their back on me instantly. And only yesterday did I see a new quite simple and mainstream score excerpt by a british composer on Twitter that was nicely typeset in Finale, but which probably will be impossible to replicate in Dorico for quite some time still… but from my experience with the program itself so far, I remain fully convinced that Dorico will develop into a must-have-for-all notation program rather soon. (given that Yamaha/Steinberg keep the cash flow coming of course, but that’s beyond the point)
Everything is relative, and personally, I’m forced to spend more money on petrol every month than the full cost of a Dorico license, so it’s not really an issue.(yes, I AM considering an electric) But since the music notation software community is rather small, by any standards, I would think that for Steinberg, and the Dorico team in particular, EVERY purchase is important, if not financially, at least morally…