Hi Ranchhand,

I've been using CorelDRAW since V2 and am now working in Corel 10. To me, I think CD5 and CD7 worked out REALLY well, and the dog of all dogs was Corel 6.

I live in the Baltimore/Washington area and have had the blessing of several service bureaus that work very well with Corel files. Granted, I rely heavily on Photoshop (my raster program of choice), but Draw has really done wonders for myself and my career. Most of my work is output in the form of exhibits and visual presentations. On the side, I do a lot of silk screen masters for hockey crests, and again, Corel has really come through. For the latter, on occasion, Illustrator files were required, so after I did all my designing, rendering, trapping, etc. in Corel, the files would convert nicely to Illustrator, and the "clean-up" once in AI was rather painless.

Illustrator, though, to me, is VERY labor intensive and never has come up to the level of Corel in instances such as user friendliness and innovation. Belive me, I've used Illustrator since the mid 90's (so I guess I can put my money where my mouth is), but to be honest, I'm really not that happy with it. HOWEVER, as I've stated MANY times before, to each his and/or her own as far as programs go. Whatever makes one happy. My only concern is compatibility, which in my eyes, has become much more do-able over the years.

So, in a nutshell, Corel has done it for me for the last decade (+/- a year or two). You've been blessed with my two cents!

You have a good one, y'hear!

Gary Garvin
Laurel, MD