Indeed nice post Paul.

Just a word to say I'm a freelance illustrator and often have to work with clients that requires illustrator files.

In those situations I still find it much easier to work with Xara and translate to illustrator at the end.

I output much better results in less time, it all has to do with ergonomics.

This being said I use photoshop a lot. I'm using CS6 and will never "upgrade" to CC, especially since there is no new features that interest me. Xara can link any bitmap editor and that's a major asset for me.

Illustrator is a royal pain to work with, but has very useful features.
Corel also has a lot of feature but is less intuitive than xara in my opinion.

Marc