I don't work for Corel, so can't help with the pricing :-)
I was part of the beta testing team for X7, but didn't like it, too many niggles. But X8 works well. Improvements have been made to the Magic Fill (although the same thing in Xara is better) it is now workable - expand the selection for better results)
They're made some improvements in the Layers Palette.
You can add text to a selection (again Xara's text tool is miles better than PSP, but at least PSP's text tool is a lot better than before).
You can add text to an image: File>Add info
What's new should be on the Corel website by now.
:-)
Grenou