I'm so sorry Jens, but being a Xara-fan as I might be, I do have to give Adobe it's credits when mentioning Illustrator.

Illustrator CS is a vast improvement over the older versions. It's relatively speedy (but not as sleek as Xara) and most important: is's a standard on it's own.

CS has some nifty transparancy options and features that come in very handy. (like resizing objects without moving their centrepoints or selecting objects with a given colour)

It may be hard for some of you (and those Xarans who don't want to read somber thoughts about their beloved program should stop reading now) but I find myself drawing more and more with Illustrator and even in the same amount of time get the same production. I must confess that it's a steep learning curve and yes, one needs to have a good memory and 8 fingers on the left hand to make use of all the keyboard shortcuts. But once mastered, the program realy pays off and you're never bothered with "Sorry, but the Ripper couldn't handle the Postscript-file, Oh, and the colours were a bit weird ..."