Here's my 2 cents worth...

Pros: very fast program (loads fast, opens files fast, closes fast, renders fast), and the best anti-aliasing and transparency around. Much easier interface than Illustrator. I use Xara for all my graphics illustration work almost exclusively. We do have Illustrator here too, but the thing is so cumbersome, so slow and so hard to use I only go to it when I absolutely have to (e.g., creating an AI9 file from a Xara original).

Paul's cons:

1) Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages

2) You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)

3) Xara is quite poor when coming to text related things.

1 and 2 I agree with (although I don't have any opinion on the TIF compression, I rarely export TIF files), but you can work around 1 and 2 fairly easily (I'd LOVE multiple pages though!).

For the way I use Xara however, number 3 is not a problem for me. It excels at the work I need to do using text (mostly logos, and mostly running text around a circle).

The main trouble I've had in the past is waiting for program patches and updates (especially as they apply to file import/export, i.e., EPS and AI filters). Hopefully now that Xara has full control back, they will post these kinds of things on a regular basis between program updates.

Stan