CorelDRAW Essentials 2

I don't know what "CorelDRAW Essentials 2" is, but you can get the full suite of CorelDRAW 12 for under $100.

But CorelTrace is not very good. The old Adobe Streamline is better, the last stand-alone version was 4, now it is part of the Illustrator package. There are other raster to vector programs out there, but I've never used them.

One that looks pretty advanced is, http://www.vextrasoft.com/index.htm , but I don't know anything about it.

 

I'm not too impressed with the software. When I check their website, the screencapture shown on one of the pages shows the curves of the lettering to be made up of straight lines. My customer's wouldn't be too happy with that and I would not want to spend the time cleaning that up.

 

Corel had a $99 competitive upgrade offer on CorelDRAW 12 for registered users of Macromedia Freehand. This was a marketing response to Macromedia's exclusion of an upgrade of Freehand (exclusion of FH altogether really) in the new Macromedia Studio8 suite. That offer has since expired.

The best, current upgrade pricing for CorelDRAW 12 I've found is at PC Connection: $129.95. The price is good for registered CorelDRAW users, as well as users of Illustrator, Freehand, Canvas and a number of other graphics programs.

You can't buy the full version of CorelDRAW for $99 from anyone --at least not anyone who is selling it legally.

 

Yes you can, for less, one way is if you know a student or teacher, and they use their ID. http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=569989 the only thing missing is phone in tech support, so big deal!

And there's a bunch on ebay, a lot of the ones being sold on there are only the cd's that were usually bundled with other hardware and software. but that doesn't mean that you don't end up with a completely legal version. corel has distributing it's software in "bundled packages" like that since the begining.

 

I found smoe info on coreldraw essentials 2...

It seems to be a crippled coreldraw 9, and a very crippled older version of photo paint, with some photo organizing tools. No Trace, some fonts and clipart.

IMO don't buy it... spend the extra and get the full corel 12

go on ebay and search for adobe streamline. This is still one of the best raster to vector softwares. about $100 to $130 on ebay.

 

That's still a legal dodge. Also beware of lots of academic software. Many cannot be upgraded using normal retail packages. Not sure if Corel falls into that category. Regardless, I'd rather pay $129 for a legit Corel12 upgrade and get all the discs, fonts, manuals and eligibility for technical support rather than get stuck with a dead end version just to save $30.

Frankly I'm surprised at how many applications are listed on the qualifications sheet to be eligible for the CorelDRAW 12 upgrade. Some in the list include Paint Shop Pro, Canvas and CorelDRAW Essentials. The Essentials package is something like $70. Same for PSP. I picked up a free and FULL version of Canvas 7 from an issue of Computer Arts Magazine. That qualifies as well!

In another angle of perspective, I recently spent $740 of my own money upgrading personal Adobe licenses to CS2 Premium. So that might be another reason why I think the $99 and $129 difference on CorelDRAW is pretty small potatoes -given the $129 version is a fully legitimate package.

 

Just making a point that you can get it for less than $100. Whether it's right or wrong is academic.

FYI the upgrade version of CorelDraw DOES NOT need proof of a qualifying product to install. How do I now? When I reloaded my system from scratch a few months ago, the first thing I loaded after win XP was my corelDraw 12 upgrade disks, I thought I might need to put my old corel 9 disk, but no. It loaded as happy as could be!