Iv been a Corel user since 1994 and the last version I bought was 11 and have used it happily. I moved to X5 for the new features and multi core support. Iv had to redo so much work as a result of using Corel Draw X5. To clarify, I do have the boxed retail edition of X5 and never had the demo running the aft mentioned machine.
I would say I have a fast and capable enough machine to run X5. I have a Corei7 920 running at 4.3Ghz , 6Gb's of RAM, a ATI HD5770 and im running Win 7 64bit. Its a fresh install. The overclock is solid and have torture tested running two instances of Prime95 pushing all cores, 8 threads to 100% for 25 hours with no errors. Memory tested with Memtest 15 hours with no errors. Windows 7 is fully updated, No Anti Virus installed, and the only other Applications installed are After Effects CS4 and Cinema4D Studio R11.5. I had many of the same issues in the Corel X5 trial on my WindowsXP SP3 machine.
Yes i have had the same results not overclocked. After Effects and C4D have been Solid.
Uninstall and reinstall shows no improvement in the issues faced. Safe mode=no change, F8 on PP startup= no change.
LIke some of the other Corel versions I had, i had to wait for service packs and patches to have a solid running copy of Corel. But in a professional setting, using software that has this many issues seriously hurts productivity and is a time and money waister. Iv read numerous posts here and in other forums of people having issues like mine or worse with X5.
First of all, its not called CorelDRAW Studio btw, you don't need a specially powerful computer, CorelDRAW must work fine on almost any standard computer. Atltough it works better on Windows 7 32- bits must work fine also on other versions of Windows.
Dear Ariel,
I use for professional purpose Corel since version 2 .
Version 7 (first with interactive interface), version 9 and 11 I would mark as the best, following could be an x3 version and all other was good, except.....
Version X4 and X5 are purely disaster products of Corel Corporation - both are come with many good intensions for improvement but criminally badly built.
If Corel survive this I believe hard time it could mean just a two thing:
First: That is an unprofesionall product created for amater loosers on PC platforms.
Second. That Corel Draw as an application is not a role business of Corel Company.
Both of them are sed.
I'm from Zagreb (Croatia, Europe) and my company in not a biggest one on domestic market, but many of our competitors who dealing with Corel are pretty desperately because we should change our main working toll with Adobe products (Illustrator and Indesign) and flush away 10-20 years of experience working in corel. All of us regularly buying CS suits because of PS and Acro (and just a sporadically use other Adobe applications).
Design, lay out and prepress we work in Corel, and now after so many years when we convinced other software users (Adobe, Macromedia etc) that corel is an professional tool = Corel convince us to the contrary - that is really built for part time hobbyists.
Thanks to many good people from this forum and their expertise in "reg edit" area and the other Macro builders - we regular users of Corel applications somehow with their and good's help succeeds to use Draw and other Corel products.
These facts should make an obligation for Corel to make huge changes in their approach to customers, but first and basically to make a product which could be competitive even without new version of "X" every two years.
Imagine following situation:
NEW COREL X PRO - professional (working) graphic tool.
With "even" page numbering in it (perhaps other macros included in application) with price of 2500 $.
If it works, if is stabile, if it don't crash (because weather report is bad), if from time to time Corel publish some update (it should not be free of charge instead new X 7,8,9 or whatever number) - everyone will buy it.
And Hobbyists, hobbyists will buy some other cheaper applications on market.
If you can't imagine this, as I'm afraid that I can't imagine this also - that the truth is - that Corel is an half made graphic tool for even not an amateurs (because they intent to be professionals some day).
Regards
Sergej
You're contradicting to yourself, you say that you use CorelDRAW for professional purposes while you say it is not a professional program.
Since that thousands of people like you and me we used to daily for so many years, it is clear that works and produces good results. Of course, there's a lot of things to improve the program, but that's not means that you can't work with it There's a lot of jobs that you can do easily wth CorelDRAW and you can't do with Illustrator, Indesign or others, and others that you need several programs and a lot of time for produce the same results.
Like you, I want a "perfect" version that don't need a service pack or any correction, fast and easy. All versions of CorelDRAW since v.3.0 have service pack, including some of the best versions (7.0, 9.0 and X3). But also Adobe programs has the same patches and corrections, but they called it and "Update" and Adobe users are happy because the company fixes several bugs and errors of the programs. But Corel users are unhappy with any upgrade, and allways think that the program is incomplete. Perhaps you believe that Adobe programs have less errors, or have less serious bugs, but this is not true. Some of the Adobe bugs are bigger than Corel problems
I don’t see any contradiction in my post, as I said I was working on almost 20 years with CorelDraw, but with last two version I was losing more than twice time than is required for some jobs – because of crashes and instability (please see post “Dockers flickering, crashed on save - but file saved successfully!”).
Adobe has problems also but they are less crucial than Corel’s, terms update and service packs are the same thing, just update sounds better.
And I am aware of advantages of Corel (because of that I use them so long), and problem is not that some hues / shades are not working or missing – problem is that you can be sure any more that the same file which can approach today - you will be able to open or save tomorrow.
We live of that, pay employers, taxes and other trivial stuff.
Sergej is right. Iv also tried X4 on several computers and held off because of the brokenness of the software. Corel is a great tool to use and the ease of it blows away many things in Adobe products but the build quality of X4 and now X5 are pretty bad. In my testing there are memory leaks in the coding that must be the cause of many of the issues...these should have been patched before release. It seems that the software was not tested throughly and now as the user, im the Beta tester. I can confirm my issues on computers with both AMD single and dual core, and Intel single and quad core under XP SP2 and SP3, Vista 32 and 64bit SP1 and Windows 7 32 and 64bit even under fresh installs of the OS and all patched. Im forced to use my old 11 now which is good, but X5 is not ready for the Professional to use reliably. I would suggest browsing here and Google search issues with X5. I did after all of my issues and found im not alone. The issues cause lost work and time on a huge level so its not just ignorable. Some people cannot even open X5 without an instant crash. I originally posted my system specs so there was no questions if my computer meets the minimum specs required to run the software.
Anyone using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 should download the service pack 2.I am working professionally like Ariel does on a daily basis, and after the service pack 2 came out for X4, I never, I mean NEVER had any bad related issues. That siad, of course people work differently, and small things always slip through the net when beta testing a product. But in general I would say that X4 is a brilliant and stable version.
The new X5 will get a service pack as well, no doubt, so when that comes everyone should download and install the service packs.
What people consider professional or not is a matter of taste, but facts are that CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is a professional suite. It is rediculous to claim otherwise.
If I would complain on every bug I hear about regarding Adobe Creative suites 2, 3, 4 from other freelancing collegues in my line of business, I would most definitly claim that Adobe CS versions are predominantly made for hobbyists.