Goodbye Xara

[pauland]

Ouch.

What was the "very annoying problem" and why have you never mentioned it on this forum?

If you have/had an opinion on the software, or a problem to be solved, this is the place to air it.

[handrawn]

ok... after Mr Nice Guy, here comes Mr Pragmatic:

I too am saying Goodbye to Xara after a good many years of buying their bi annual interface upgrades.

entirely your choice - good luck

The final kicker for me is that despite an extensive description, complete with examples, pictures and pdfs, Xara "product support" has done nothing to fix a very annoying problem in the Print control when using some Brother printers. I was made to feel that it was my fault or even my unpaid job to do all the debugging for them, even though each time I sent some details in, replies indicated it was more or less ignored.
I tried pretty much the same thing in Affinity and lo and behold, no problems.

you know, sometimes there are just incompatibilities with certain configurations/prgrams/devices... nothing works with everything in exatly the way everyone wants, it's a fact of life.. it's not the job of support to make the program work in every conceivable way possible, just to support in the way it does work as far as is possible and log bugs for the development team - and the root cause may be nothing to do with the xara program regardles of what else works or does not

I also asked why it was impossible to have default setting saved as global options rather than on a page by page basis, to be told "that is the way it is"!. Had they actually pretended they were listening and even say, offered a nominal discount on next 'upgrade' for the many hours of my time spent explaining this vexing issue, it would have been much much better customer support.

I do hope you realise how that sounds

I saw that about a year or so ago they were advertising for programmers so assumed this was to do a careful rebuild of the programme and fix up a number of other very longstanding glaring errors, omissions and oversights. There is so much that could be simply done to further develop, improve and make this programme a real winner, but instead, they are just milking it.

I am sure they are doing the best they can with the resources they have, which are limited

I am also happy to say that Affinity is cheaper than a Xara upgrade and does all I really need

a good reason for moving then

I anticipate that they might be more responsive to user comments, too.

good luck with that too

[Grenou]

Ouch ouch, that hurts.

I don't understand why your first post is of such a negative nature.
Everyone here bends over backwards/forewards to be helpful, so there is no reason to make the statement you did, which just makes people feel bad.

Xara rules in my book, silly licence or not :-)

Grenou

[gwpriester]

Xara rules in my book, silly licence or not :-)

[DavidDB]

Olympia London Windows 3 Show - Charles Moir was demoing XARA STUDIO - a notorious CorelDRAW file that could render in exactly the time it took to visit the loo and pop the kettle on.
In Xara Studio it was almost instantaneous, I refused to believe what I was seeing on screen and insisted going behind the scenes to see if there was a crafty Video running.
I bought into XARA that day.
At the time I was a main UK dealer for Corel, and advised clients th lasers publishing including running a range of courses at a London University.
After a recent bout of cancer I have considerably slowed down lol But I still maintain about 10 sites, Restaurants, Computer Dealership, Doctors surgery, Ecig Chain and a 360 degree Street View agency.
One min Im designing a FAVICON, the next a roadside billboard - many of those clients are supported with Cheap 1080p TVs with a USB keypen and what we call "Screensavers". I might do 50 in a week (many have extensive templates).

I got listed in my Current Xara search 1.5 GB of stuff
Dread to look at the archive lol

So clearly I am not even contemplating moving now - yep I upgraded to 365 on day one if only to be rid of the wait every year while WebDesigner gets all the love before the Pro Users.
Am I happy this year yea mostly, although some of the things I know may of us had the the wishlists have yet to appear, and I sure wanted some support for the mushrooming #360 cameras appearing everywhere.

I have also found Tech support to be nothing short of brilliant going beyond anything I dared to expect for such a cheap package.

At the same time I can see why some users might feel there is less to see this year, I can certainly see some polish but suspect the dripfeed of new features might start trickling down quite quickly.

[Egg Bramhill]

Olympia London Windows 3 Show - Charles Moir was demoing XARA STUDIO - a notorious CorelDRAW file that could render in exactly the time it took to visit the loo and pop the kettle on.

I can remember seeing that demonstration David. If I recall correctly it was a rendering of a red barn surrounded by conifer trees. As you state Corel Draw was painfully slow whilst Xara rendered it in seconds.

[Grenou]

Whilst we are singing Xara's praises... (well deserved I might add)..
A friend who worked for Corel at the time they took over PaintShop Pro, said that the difference between Corel and Xara is that Xara cares and it shows.
Amen to that.
Corel doesn't invent/develop anything. They acquire a good program and then strangle it.
I test for Corel PSP and feel it's an opportunity missed, nay, lost.
Vector tools haven't been touched since the Jasc days (2004). So yippee for the wonderful Xara!

:-)
Grenou

[pauland]

It was as though a dark cloud passed over the world when Corel was "selling" Xara software.

I first came across Xara when visiting a computer show/exhibition in Islington. Xara had a stand there and I bought Xara Studio 1.0.

[Barbara B]

I'm going to close this thread out. I think that all that can be said, has been said.