Corel DRAW Graphics Suite X6 Upgrade [Old Version]

Prompt and smooth delivery/access. As always (have used CorelDraw since version 1) it is an excellent and powerful graphics suite. Many improvement make graphics preparation and desktop publishing easier. Unfortunately, in Corels drive to make things better they change some things that make them harder to access and use. Software developers need to learn how much is enough and when to quit fiddling with a product. It is like the axiom for oil painting, "...if you work colors too much, eventually they will turn to mud." Despite this it is a great suite and I use it daily.

This software has been the bane of my existence. When I loaded old CorelDraw 12, Corel prompted me to upgrade and gave me a free 30-day trial of X6. This led me to believe I could upgrade from CorelDraw 12. I bought the X6 upgrade from Amazon. Turns iut you can onky upgrade from X5 or X4 and you better still have the serial number. Corel support basically told me "too bad." I then bought the full version of X5 with plans to load it then use the X6 upgrade. Turns out X5 doesn't work with Windows 8. I then bought Windows 7 and upgraded my desktop (where I had installed CorelDraw 12). X5 still won't load. I get a message saying that there is another installation of CorelDraw. But that was overwritten when I installed windows 7. I have mixed feelings about posting a 1-star review because, technically, it's not about how X6 is to use. CorelDraw offers a lot of features for far less than Adobe's Creative Suite. But this experience is outrageous. Over $300 later and I still have too-old-to-be-supported CorelDraw 12. Amazon won't take back the software because I opened the box and Corel tricked me into buying an upgrade version I can't use and will do nothing about it. If you feel that the review is inappropriate, please flag it.

As a user of CorelDRAW graphics suite for over 10 years, I find this new versions to be excellent; I use PhotoPaint for most of my work with photography and the new graphics suite supports most of the popular image file types. As a retired medical school professor, I tried to order Adobe Photoshop but they would not honor the reduced price for teachers and students (3 years was to long be be retired to be considered to be a teacher, they said). I had older outdated versions of CorelDraw bought as a teacher but had not upgraded in many years. Corel unlike Adobe honored my old version (many more than 3 years old) and allowed me to purchase the X6 upgrade. Thank you Corel! The new graphics suite is all that I liked before but better not to mention support for the latest Windows operating systems.

The over-all product is great. However, had a problem with some of the plug-ins not working or being on the DVD/CD. Had to contact Corel and finally got the issue resolved. The seller in not way had anything to do with the issue(s) I had. I received the product on time and would likely purchase from seller again.

I upgraded from X3. Granted, my graphics needs aren't real demanding. The X3 did all that I needed and ran fine on Windows 7. I upgraded just on general principles. But, I haven't found any new features that I have found useful that I didn't already have on X3. I'm sure that others with more sophisticated needs might use the newer features, but not me.