Various Technical Issues in X6 - Support COncers

Hi,

I have spent all morning trying to obtain an e-mail address to send my concerns to in a reasonable and private manner. Apparently I can not contact Corel through e-mail. I then spent another 2 hours jumping through hoops to get my product registered so I can access support to understand that I need some support code. 

Lacking any way to contact Corel I am now copying the entire content of my prepared e-mail here. What I would have liked to discuss in a professional manner with Corel will have to become an open letter to Corel, because apparently they are too important to give me their e-mail address, in spite of the fact that for everything I registered this morning I had to supply and verify MY e-mail address repeatedly. 

Prepare yourself, wall of text incoming. Her goes:

Dear Corel,

First a bit of background:

I represent a medium sized digital printing firm in South Africa. We have been using CorelDraw since version 8 as our primary DTP and design tool. Until recently we have been on version X3, and had been using it with very little complaint.

Being a commercial printer in both the educational and commercial markets, the nature of our work varies greatly. From long text driven manuals and books, through numbered forms work, to design/graphic intensive pamphlets and brochures. This variety of applications has never been a problem, from CorelDraw 8 through to X3.

Approximately 12 months ago we decided it is time to move on from version X3 and get with the times. Much discussion was held whether we should switch to Adobe applications, or remain with CorelDRAW. In the end we decided to stick with CorelDRAW, due to the fact that so far it has not been a problem. About 4 months ago we upgraded to CorelDRAW X6 and increased our licences from 5 to 7.

This is a decision we now sorely regret, and I will explain the reasons below. After having completed the process of updating the existing artwork to version X6, we are now busy with the time consuming process of reverting them all to version X3, so we can at least service our customers.

The most critical problems we are experiencing as follows:

1.       Stalls, Crashes and Out of Memory Errors: Files that worked perfectly fine in X3 on the same PC’s, now perform extremely volatile and poorly. These files do not have to change at all, all that is required to break the file is for it to be upgraded to X6. This makes for massive amounts of repeated work, as every time all unsaved work is lost. These problems have been researched on your forums, and every possible resource on the internet. Temp files have been cleared, memory has been upgraded, and every possible solution, no matter how mundane, has been attempted. No joy. The fact remains that these are the exact same files and PC’s that gave almost zero problems on X3. At the end of the research trail? “Corel says they are aware of the problems and will fix it.”

2.       Files Size: The simple act of opening an X3 file and saving it in version X6 more than quadruples the file in size. Absolutely nothing in the file has to change, except the version. This seems a massive increase in file size for no increase in content or features. I would guess that is where all the memory/performance is going as well.

3.       Linked Paragraph Text: As stated earlier, some of our publications are long text driven documents. These obviously require linked paragraph text, to manage the flow of text from page to page. Admittedly, this was not the best performing feature in X3, but it was completely usable. In X6 it is significantly worse. Performance declines with every additional link, screen updates for changes are sluggish, displays incorrectly, or text on screen disappears completely. Every time this happens, the user has to leave text editing mode en re-enter it to force the screen to display what the actual state of the text is. Due to the performance issues this is a slow process (waiting for the screen to update), and is a completely unproductive way of editing text. There is also some completely inexplicable things that happen. In one specific document from page 217 onwards the text does not display or print, but when you enter text edit mode the text is displayed correctly, leave edit mode and it disappears. This forces us to manually manage page breaks and flow on several of our larger documents, which is a risky business if you are a printer. This has also been researched ad nausea. At the end of the research trail? “Corel says they are aware of the problems and will fix it.”

4.       Print Merges: We use print merges for a variety of variable data applications; individualised diaries and certificates, bulk mailing labels and marketing materials, as well as digitally numbering forms and books. Time for smaller print merges on average has increased on average 5 times. Something that took 3 minutes to prepare for print now takes in excess of 15 minutes to be ready for print. Larger print merges are impossible, as point 1 applies. Stall, crash, or out of memory. Once again a researched error. At the end of the research trail? “Corel says they are aware of the problems and will fix it.”

These are a summary of the key issues for us that makes Corel X6 unusable in our environment. We check daily for updates, hoping that the next patch will fix it. We are now at 16.4, and none of these problems have disappeared, or even improved. What is more frustrating is that in my research on some of these problems, it seems they have been carried over from version to version, and have yet to be fixed. This creates the impression that these problems are just not a priority for Corel.

As far as machine specs go, these problems occur from our lower end machines (Core i5 Win 7 with 4 GB RAM) to newer machines (Core i7 Win 8 with 8GB RAM), so I do not believe this is the problem. I also wish to repeat that these are the same machines and CorelDRAW files that perform beautifully on X3.

Looking at the “what’s new” features for X6 there are some nice design toys, but the tools that are important to a commercial printer like us seems to have not gotten any attention. To the contrary, it seems these new features have significantly hampered these tools.

As it stands, we did invest in version X6, and therefore we have to find a solution. I would firstly like to know what we can do to make this workable. Secondly please inform me what I can expect from Corel to address these issues.

Regards,

Francois Liebenberg

PS: I have removed my Licence Number from the message, as I do not want every one to have access to it. Even though I am not allowed to have your e-mail addresses, you now have mine. If someone from Corel can kindly contact me it would be greatly appreciated, so we can communicate on e-mail, like the rest of the business fraternity. (I assure you I have a legal seven user license, and will verify on request).