Things that make you go hmmm - Corel Conspiracy Theory

[Andy D]

In a previous post, around a month ago, I wrote about how my Corel Draw 16
started to get real janky all of a sudden... Now in the past week or so, when every I close down
Corel Draw because it is messing up, this internet site pops up automatically:
https://www.coreldraw.com/en/pages/...D50D0D2F89&x-vehicle=Upsell&pcuversion=&hwch=

It's a site to upgrade my Corel Draw...
I know it sounds crazy, but is it possible that Corel is doing something to make older versions less stable?

 

[kheebl]

I mean apple does it to the older model phones to "save battery life" so It wouldn't surprise me. I've been having corel issues for a few months myself. I cant get my macros to work even after doing a complete reinstall. I get a VBA error. Im running x7 tho.

 

[Gino]

I can't get my Corel to work anymore, so I gave up. That was about 12 years ago. I took it off all of our systems entirely.

 

[Andy D]

Mine is 16,
- I can't import AI files
- any time I try to assign a font, corel freaks out and starts scrolling thru all of the fonts.
- pasting a image corrupts the corel file about 25% of the time.
- My open from templates completely disappeared.
and many more things....

 

[Andy D]

I can't get my Corel to work anymore, so I gave up. That was about 12 years ago. I took it off all of our systems entirely.

I have been a Corel Draw fanboy for many years, now I'm thinking about jumping ship... just not to AI or Flexi, I'm not a fan of either.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

In part I can understand the inclination to think conspiracy, but keep in mind Draw 16 is what X6? That has no official support for Win 10, which I would imagine most on here would be on. That in combination of the rolling release nature of Win 10, I wouldn't expect X6 to work for long even if it did initially.

It's entirely possible that there is a conspiracy to force updates, but have to keep in mind the nature of Win 10 and that X6 never was supported on that platform version. I am assuming you are on Win 10, most are by now I would imagine.

 

[Johnny Best]

I think Corel was bought by some corporation in 2019, they probably want everyone to upgrade.
I am not a Corel user so can't help you with the conspiracy thing.
I have been using Affinity Designer more and more. It's not a cloud base thing.

 

[Andy D]

In part I can understand the inclination to think conspiracy, but keep in mind Draw 16 is what X6? That has no official support for Win 10, which I would imagine most on here would be on. That in combination of the rolling release nature of Win 10, I wouldn't expect X6 to work for long even if it did initially.

It's entirely possible that there is a conspiracy to force updates, but have to keep in mind the nature of Win 10 and that X6 never was supported on that platform version. I am assuming you are on Win 10, most are by now I would imagine.

Thanks Wild Man! I was about to blow this thing wide open & be all over the news... but you had to come up with a reasonable and plausible explanation...How much are they paying you?
I hope it's worth the price of selling your soul to the MAN!

 

[Andy D]

I have been using Affinity Designer more and more. It's not a cloud base thing.

That is the program I was thinking about switching to, how do you like it?

 

[Johnny Best]

That is the program I was thinking about switching to, how do you like it?

Change is unsettling. I like the fact you don't have to pay a monthly fee and it is really nice program with a lot of helpful videos.
Have Affinity Photo also.

 

[Bradley Signs]

I have been using Windows since it was invented, and DOS just before that.
Win 10 is the most horrid thing ever, and Win7 was the best.
Forced to change. That's a conspiracy.
Is Corel starting a Conspiracy?
I can't imagine why they would.

Sure, there are plenty of pansies out there who would just suck it up and say oh well..
But when push comes to shove, I certainly would drop Corel like a hot rock!
To much free stuff from people who want to screw the system.
Conspiracies come at a cost, like Corel losing everything they have going.

I have Corel 4 and LXI Expert Pro that I got for free when I bought some junk from Sign Whorehouse.
Why do i need anything else? It prints large or small, converts to EPS, and I cut with the LXI.
I like everything simple.

I now have WIN 10 now..
I would not be surprised if that was your whole issue.
Corel gives me some crap at times, I clean the machine, do virus killers, clean the registry regularly, and what ever else, reboot, and Viola!

Back in business.

There! Now I feel better!

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Thanks Wild Man! I was about to blow this thing wide open & be all over the news... but you had to come up with a reasonable and plausible explanation...How much are they paying you?
I hope it's worth the price of selling your soul to the MAN!

Ironically, I have also been accused of thinking that devs are incompetent (at least Adobe ones as that was what that thread turned into being about).

Depending on what your stance is on programming languages (high v. low level, strong v. weak typed etc), I have created my own programs (python and electron (web languages) based. In other words, I can have sympathy on things changing that are beyond the developers control (why I usually try to make mine portable, even my closed source ones). Why I am usually also sympathetic to the latest releases and leary of updating way, way too soon.

What can I say, I'm just full of contradictions.

I will say this, Win 10 is what got me off Windows. If I have Windows anytime in the future it will be solely to have Windows builds of whatever I'm working on, if it can't be done with WINE (electron apps can be, not so much with Python, at least not how I've been able to get it to work). I have used Windows since the DOS 3.2 days when I was a little kid all the way up to Win 8 (last version I had on bare metal, Cintiq Companion 1st gen). Win 98 was by far my favorite and the most powerful. Not necessarily power in terms of computing power, but what abilities the user had within the operating system that are now being locked out of within the later versions, con of that is that one could bork your system fairly easily, but that seems to be the cause with this latest OS and the rolling release nature of it.

But I digress (which seems to be a common theme with me, oh well, I just try to spread sunshine and I'm reckoning we could use a little bit of that in this day and age).

 

[twmiller24]

If you're thinking about switching to Affinity, now's the time. Because of COVID, they're 50% off right now for two more days. And, they're still offering (also for 2 more days) 90 day free trials. I have all their products and I'm happy with them, although I primarily use Illustrator at work.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

 

[Bobby H]

I know it sounds crazy, but is it possible that Corel is doing something to make older versions less stable?

I wouldn't put it past Corel to do something like that. The company has been owned by private equity companies since 2003. Vector Capital bought it then. They put some effort into loading up Corel with lots of debt by acquiring various other companies like Jasc Software, Roxio, Word Perfect and Parallels more recently. Last year Vector Capital sold Corel to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR).

Private equity companies are famous for meddling in the operations of companies they acquire and ultimately ruining them. Sears is an excellent example of this. So it wouldn't surprise me if honchos higher up the chain at Vector Capital or KKR were giving orders to Corel's engineers to sabotage older working copies of CorelDRAW as a means of forcing users to upgrade.

There are other notable cases of tech firms doing hinkey things to slow down legacy software and hardware. Apple is a prime example. They were caught bogging down the performance of older iOS devices as a ploy to force customers to upgrade to their newest, even more expensive blingy bling. Their defense: the software and hardware was compromised to protect the aging batteries in those devices. This ignores the cottage industry that has built up to replace integrated batteries in mobile devices like the iPhone. Nevertheless, most Apple fans believed the excuse without much question.

Corel doesn't have the brand equity of Apple, not to mention the level of customer loyalty either. If they were indeed messing around with older software (using their push notification and ad delivery system as a means of doing so) the act would be very risky.

It's most likely that Windows itself is the culprit in degrading performance of older versions of CorelDRAW. Windows 10 is in a perpetual state of change due to the evolving situation of computer security. Corel doesn't update any of its legacy software, much less do anything to make it work with changes Microsoft makes under the hood in Windows. An update to Windows 8 forced me to upgrade from CorelDRAW X5 to X6. The big "second edition" update to Windows 98 is what killed CASmate for our shop; we had to migrate to Flexi.

I have been using Affinity Designer more and more. It's not a cloud base thing.

I'm tempted to buy a copy of Affinity Designer with it being 50% off currently. $25 seems like a bargain. If we start receiving Affinity files from customers it might be good to have a copy on hand to be able to troubleshoot the art files if there are any problems. I gave up writing the newsletter for my civic club (after doing it for over 20 years); the lady who took it over isn't doing a good job with the page layout. She's using some junk software she picked up at Staples. I tried suggesting she just use MS Word for that. I'm thinking about trying to point her toward Affinity Publisher.

 

[Andy D]

although I primarily use Illustrator at work.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

For me that's the one thing that throw up a red flag, I really do not like Illustrator & it seems
very similar, is that correct?

 

[unclebun]

I am using Windows 10, and also have Corel's latest subscription version. However, I also still have all the versions back to X6 still installed. I fired up X6 and did a brief test drive. Then shut it down. Found no odd behavior. No popup trying to sell me anything. Maybe you just need to adjust your tinfoil hat?

 

[De.signs Nanaimo]

While I will accept poor behaviour from a corporation as probable, I am on Corel x5 and windows 10, no issues with Corel, but don't get me started on Win10. Corel doesn't like poorly prepared pdf's, if the designer knows what they are doing they can give you a pdf that will work in any program. I gave up trying to make crappy pdf's work and just insist on a print ready pdf, transparencies and gradients converted to bitmaps, fonts to curves and no extra layers, and they always work in Corel.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Windows 10 is in a perpetual state of change due to the evolving situation of computer security.

I would like to believe that, but that isn't just the case. Security updates would not be quite as bad as this fully feature updates that they do. If security was the primary concern we still wouldn't have zero days (or the more troublesome 1 day) concerns that some date back to Win 95 (that's right, there is still code that date back to Win 95 in Win 10), the price for somewhat backward compatibility of legacy programs, I have a program written in 1997 that still works on Win 10 today flawlessly, that's good and bad.).

Also keep in mind that Windows is totally dependent (last time I checked) on the insiders program for QA and some things slip through, even when they are reported. I think there was an instance in this latest release as well of that happening. Win 10 is really not an enterprise OS anymore. Enterprise OSs do not and should not follow a rolling release model (this also include individual software as well).

I am using Windows 10, and also have Corel's latest subscription version. However, I also still have all the versions back to X6 still installed. I fired up X6 and did a brief test drive. Then shut it down. Found no odd behavior. No popup trying to sell me anything. Maybe you just need to adjust your tinfoil hat?

It all depends on the individual computer and workflow as well and how sophisticated your setup is. I've had some programs that were new and people complained about bugginess and my workflow nothing showed up (that's why one should never get the first iteration of any release.

So it wouldn't surprise me if honchos higher up the chain at Vector Capital or KKR were giving orders to Corel's engineers to sabotage older working copies of CorelDRAW as a means of forcing users to upgrade

Well, to be fair, all software vendors have an incentive to force people to upgrade and programs like DRAW are starting to get long in the tooth, so it's going to be harder and harder to do that with feature sets alone, especially if a user(s) can get by with tools that have existed since forever, and I would imagine that is also one of the bigger pushes for subscription as well. With WASM, it would be quite easy to compile that lower level code to get it to run on the web and probably start seeing more programs that way (browser APIs are just about as robust as an OS nowadays). So I wouldn't be surprised if that's the next step and quite honestly, if everything is going the subscription rolling release way, I would prefer it to be solely browser based at that point. Doesn't matter what OS one uses, what arch your on. Shoot, I run a locally compiled SVG editor from the browser and I can run it off my desktop, phone or PI.

And if one starts seeing ARM being pushed (I can argue for and against it, it all depends on the situation, it has it's place), that would also save a lot of time for compiling to ARM if they don't already have a variant ready for that arch (or the manpower/talent to do that).

 

[printhog]

you can disable the pop up ads in corel.. see the pic.. that you're on x6 is limiting for working, corel 2019 is actually pretty good. x6 and x7 had massive issues with the font manager freaking out. I was hesitant to upgrade to 2019 but am happy that I did now. Only issue i have now is that corel wants upgrades as a membership (SaaS) and they're ridiculously over priced.

I am migrating my decal work to VinylMaster, as its got a lot of effects ('custom' fill effects for lettering) and features (like contour cutting) that corel doesn't support. For vehicle lettering, its a snap to make chrome - type copy, select chrome fill, print, cutcontour. to do that on corel is a nightmare.

.
In Windows, click the Start button and select Control Panel

In Control Panel click Administrative Tools

In the right-hand pane double-click Task Scheduler (allow permission if asked)

In the left-hand pane select Task Scheduler Library

In the top middle pane you should see a list of scheduled events. Look for those related to Corel (in mine there are 'CorelUpdateHelperTask' and 'CorelUpdateHelperTaskCore')

Right-click on each and select 'Disable'.

That's it. Those annoying upgrade pop-ups will stop.

 

[Jester1167]

A couple of possible fixes.

1. Whenever you have repeatable errors, shut the software down and click on the window icon and type %temp% and hit ENTER, and delete all the temp files it will let you. Sometimes bad data gets written to a program's working temp file and it references the bad data and crashes over and over at the exact same spot. I seriously doubt that this will solve your problem, but it is a good idea to delete these files weekly. All programs write temp data to this location and often leave behind stray files. If you don't do this, you will be amazed at the number of files and the total amount of data stored here.

2. Insert the Corel disk or install file for the version your using and run the repair option. This is helpful if you have installed new programs or windows updates that have overwritten a shared resource.

3. If your desperate you can try resetting Corel to default settings. Make sure you have saved your workspace unless you want to set it up all over again.

4. If those don't help try the Corel forums. Here you can find out how common your problems are and if they may be a fix or workaround.

5. At this point, you've just wasted enough time and aggravation that would have more than paid for the upgrade. Then again, you will still have to set up your new workspace which can be painful on its own. Exporting a workspace from the previous versions has been hit and miss for me, and going from x6 to 20 it's doubtful.

I feel your pain.