I have to admit, Illy's pretty darn good

[Big Frank]

We all know that for artwork Xara is capable of anything illustrator can do - when the right artist is using it.

that's a very good point. you can be some poor noob who knows how to downloadand activate a pirate copy of cs5 but the results of his work will be directly related to his talent and effort not his tools - granted what comes out from illy may be better than what you can do with mspaint, but i think that's because it automates a lot of tasks you have to do by hand in an app that has 90% fewer tools (or had to do by hand in older versions of illy)

34p can of beans versus £3.34 can of beans bundled with a shopping cart full of other stuff you don't need

very good analogy indeed - which one would you buy?

Your markup seems a bit excessive, Frank.

i was directly quoting today's prices on amazon.fr which i assumed perhaps incorrectly to be competitive

Frank, I appreciate that you get along without Illustrator very well, your work shows that you are at the top of your game using Xara.

no, i'm still learning all the time - if you want to see an expert what i is in awe of, look at gary bouton's work and as far as sketching is concerned, there's a bunch of people who make me look the amateur that i am, people like steve handdrawn and zeb the toon

for €85 I think Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is an absolute bargain, but perhaps Inkscape is the best value of all

i agree on both points

If you are just a hobbyist then you probably don't need to own Illustrator, but it is still a nice thing to have, you do get a lot of bang for your buck

especially if it's a pirate copy, i am convinced there'd be far fewer pirate copies of creative suite if the prices weren't so damn extortionate. for me the matter of price does come into it. but for my business i need a tool that can fulfil all of my needs. i'm sure illustrotar could be that tool but it's not even in the ranking (neither is any serif product) because i am so deeply satisfied with xara - and i get away every time with exporting from xara as pdf for every client who "absolutely and irrevocably" insists on having an ai file - and many printers i have come across in my work seem to be unaware that an ai or an eps is simply not required if you supply a pdf (and I have had some who have truly argued the toss with me over it until they have had to be proved wrong) - it would be nice if xara could export illustrator compatible ai and eps files to keep such people happy

i am probably talking out of my boot but i did like your happy accident image at the beginning of this thread bob