Drawing Tool Settings.

Hello all

I have been a CorelDraw user for over 10 years now.  I recently tried Illustrator CS4 and wonder how I can get the same drawing Capability out of Corel. 

To be more precise.

In CorelDraw, I have never truly been able to draw the way I have wanted to.  I can never get the Freehand Smoothing, Corner Threshold, or Straight line Threshold setting right.  For example, I try to draw flames... and instead of pointy ends, I sometimes get curves which need adjusting, or I get multiple nodes which need deleting, or I get exactly what I want.  I have gotten used to this of course... but then I tried Illustrator CS4

First thing I do i n Illustrator is draw some flames... a good task with curves and points.  Right off the bat I was able to draw the object with fairly precises corners and curves with considerably less adjustments.  Without adjustment, each flame tounge was pointy...

My question would be specifically, what are the best settings for CorelDraw drawing tools?  Or... curse my fingers for typing this... does Illustrator have even better features that I might be missing out on??

Thanks for your time

Chris