I told my colleague (designer) in our publishing house that I invested in a whole bunch of Corel software ... he swallowed, took a deep breath and looked at me, and finally said: "respect. you must be very tough. and you really waste you money for (toys like) that?"
I pulled out a sheet of paper with a laser print of my first try in Corel and asked: "then, can you explain to me why I can do some illustration like this in the half time of what I would need to do that in AI? in best print quality?" (I admit it was not the best illustration, but that looked already radically different than the flat design style that they are producing for decades in the design department). He looked at it, went red and pale, then said: "I never saw CorelDraw in action, and I never expected someone can get results with another software than Adobe's... but sometimes in the past I heard people in the prepress had problems with Corel files"
Actually, I would give them TIFs, not CDR files, that I include in my InDesign pages. No problem at all. The illustration will be used in my next magazine project... ;o) unfortunately it will not be paid, as work that is done at home after the office hours will never be paid in that company. But I already realize a big difference in my personal working style and results (in the office with AI), since I experiment more with Corel in my spare time.