Rating: 
Summary: No Clipart Manual???? Why didn't anyone say anything?????
Review: I have been using CorelDraw since version 3 quite a few years ago. Although I have used Photoshop and Illustrator, I find myself using CorelDraw for word processing right up to anything I can think of for productivity and publishing.
I got a new computer with XP on it and decided that it was time to look into an upgrade for CorelDraw since I did not upgrade for several versions. After reading the reviews here on Amazon.com, I was excited to try this program once again.
I was FURIOUS when I received my upgrade with NO MANUAL!!!! I opened up the box and found a note that if you want the manual with the clipart, font, etc information, you had to call the company AND PAY AN ADDITIONAL $32 FOR IT!!!!
WHY DIDN'T ANYONE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS????
The price for CorelDraw 12 upgrade would be okay if the manuals came with it, but unfortunately, if you want the clipart guides and lists you have to shell out another $32.
I have found CorelDraw to be a decent improvement over my older versions, but quite frankly, nothing has thrilled me too much about it that I am raving about the upgrade.
The only manual that came with the upgrade is rather dry and sparse.
All in all, I am disappointe in this product, although it does not move along as slowly as I expected it to, being an XP program and loaded with so many supposed extras.
Of all of the CorelDraw versions I have tried, I still like version 7 the best for the interface, but the Photopaint back then was lacking.
If the manuals had all come with this upgrade, I might have better things to say about it, but without them, the program is substandard and low class for the money. The clipart manual is spiral bound, by the way, which is an improvement over previous versions.
The company maintains that most people have CorelDraw 11 so they do not need a clipart manual.
Whatever that means.
Quite stupid considering that the upgrade requirements do not even require that you have a previous version of CorelDraw, but you can upgrade from other brands like Adobe.
Rating: 
Summary: CorelDRAW 12 Graphic Suite
Review: I just purchased CorelDRAW 12 Graphic Suite and it crashes for no apparent reason as did CorelDRAW 11 Graphic Suite until Corel developed new drivers for it. CorelDRAW 12 sometimes gives you a warning that it is going to crash and other times it does not. It crashes repeatedly! Not every two minutes, of course, but you can plan on it crashing faithfully. Until Corel fixes the problem, which usually takes them forever until they admit it. SAVE! SAVE! SAVE! & SAVE somemore. It's rediculous that they send out programs like this. So far, I've used only CorelDRAW 12 and not the other programs in the suite. Don't plan on Corel doing anything soon, except bragging up its virtues!
Rating:
Summary: crash city
Review: I upgraded from v10 hoping to see a lot of new features. CorelDraw in itself is a very valuable program - I have used it for years. However v12 does crash and it does crash often, and for this reason alone it is extremely dissapointing. I don't think it was worth the upgrade, there just aren't enough new useful features to offset the frequent crashing / memory leak problems. Basically what you get is some spiffy modernized graphics and icons, no significant improvement to the UI. The word on the street has it that there are some new features however I haven't explored enough to find them. I suppose the masking is a bit better. They still haven't added a curve smoothing option to the path tool in photopaint, this was a feature I was hoping I would see in v12.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Really New and doesn't do Mac after Version 11
Review: I've used Corel Draw and PhotoPaint since Version 2, on both the Mac and Windows systems. Corel has decided that they are after bigger bucks by sliding over to Microsoft and abandoning Mac users, who I have found to be the creative ones in the art world.
Stay with Version 11 if you are a Mac user, and can't afford to move upward to Adobe, otherwise using Adobe products will make you smile, and you'll also get fewer computer "FreezeUps".
Rating: 
Summary: The best version of Corel Suite.
Review: I've used Corel since Version 8. Version 12 is the best version of them all. Terrific workflow and great user interface. Simply great software. They've really pulled the product up since the crash prone version 8 to 10 days.
Rating:
Summary: Returning Corel-phile
Review: I've used Graphics software for everything from brochures, catalogs, posters, flyers, mass mailings, and now highly technical scale drawings in archaeology. I have used ALL programs from Adobe, Macromedia, ACD Systems (Canvas 9 GIS+), and Corel. In my opinion, Corel Graphics Suite 12 is the most advanced and stable suite of programs I've used. Corel delivers on its promises. The filters that make it compatible with most important competitors actually work and work well. I purchased an educational version directly from Corel for $99.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Product
Review: I've used the Corel Draw suites since v7 for all my various print and web projects. I've never had to use any other product to achieve completion to my projects - in fact, I consistantly have to fix graphics at work that other people/apps can't handle with AI or FH. For its price, it's the best bang for the buck: a vector editor, bitmap editor, tons of fonts and clipart, font manager, bitmap-to-vector editor, etc. You're not going to get this much product at a better price. I know some have said their PCs crash with the product, yet I've never had a problem with any well-kept PC (and I use three different PCs). This means a relatively stable OS (Win2K or XP), an adequate amount of RAM (756MB min, but I never use a system with less than 1GB personally), good video card with current drivers, good printer with current drivers, and proper setup/maint of your hard drives, etc.
Rating:
Summary: CorelDRAW 12 the best version ever
Review: If you ask what is the best illustrator software in the market, eight out of ten will say Adobe Illustrator. The answer is wrong. The best is CorelDRAW. Also there is a known fact that Corel Photo Paint is the only serious competitor of Adobe Photoshop. These two applications are included inside the Corel Graphic Suite box, amount other utilities as Bitstream Font Navigator to manage fonts, Corel TRACE, and Corel CAPTURE, Moreover is Corel RAVE with CorelDRAW interface and performance to create Flash files easily. On top of this box is a price tag than nobody can refuse.
All these applications have been carefully bugs cleaned, and this version is the most stable and faster ever produced by Corel Corporation. Corel is known for offers several new tools in each new version, but this time they have been concentrated in cleaning and stabilizing these applications, and as a result they have come out with the best version ever.
Last weekend four product managers form a world wide corporation asked me to design eighteen flyers for them. Thanks to Corel Graphic Suite 12, I designed them in three days. These last two weeks I have been designing a catalog for a mayor auto distributor. Photo Paint helps to process almost three hundred photographs from negative film, and preprinted catalogs. Do I see crashes, the famous CARM, or slow down of these applications? The answer is "NOT."
There are few excellent new tools, but there are not the most important parts in this new version. The most important facts that make this version the best ever are the changes Corel has made inside these applications engines to improve performance and compatibility with other popular applications, and a great deal of improvement in automatization thru Visual Basic for Applications, also full support of Open Type.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the trouble or cost to upgrade
Review: If you have Version 9 (or later), there is really no need to upgrade to Version 12. The enhancements since Version 9 have been trivial and simply do not warrant the cost to upgrade. Smart Drawing Tools, while touted as being the next best thing to sliced bread, are mis-named; they should be called "Guessing Game Drawing Tools" since the user gets to guess what the software thinks you're trying to do; the results are often silly and counter-productive. Better to actually learn how to use the application. Enhanced snapping in particular actually makes the process of snapping objects to grids and guides messy and unpredictable, and the default settings (sprinkled across three or four dialog boxes) result in confusion and loss of performance. The interface has been needlessly revised once again, leading to yet another learning curve delay while you struggle to get used to where to find things and how they behave this time around--the potential loss in productivity alone makes the effort to upgrade moot. Some of the so-called enhancements have actually been around since before Version 12; I guess the other reviewers blowing the Corel horn just never found them, and took Corel's marketing hype seriously. If all this isn't bad enough, stability appears to have taken a hit as well. After launching Version 12 for the first time, it crashed within twelve clicks. All I did was create six rectangles and attempt to snap them to a grid. Not only would the objects not align properly, but the program bombed in the attempt. A fancy "program recovery" wizard came up claiming to be able to preserve the data I had created; then the wizard bombed too, and everything was lost. Not very encouraging. Mind you, I am not some kind of indiscriminate Corel-basher; I have been using Draw since Version 1, and have found it consistently superior to Adobe, who for many years appeared to do little more than repackage old spaghetti code in a dismal, counter-intuitive user interface. But Corel is now at risk of losing the game. If Version 9 does the job for you, stick with it. If you can't live without the latest and greatest, it might be time to jump ship.
Rating:
Summary: Coreldraw 12
Review: What a great suite of products. I have a new employee that I just started on Coreldraw 12 and within 2 weeks he is loving it! I have used the product since version 1 and highly recommend it to someone who needs a easy to use and also a professional suite of products that will get anything from business cards to billboards done!
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