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I am hating CorelDraw 2020!

Andy D

Active Member
I have been using CorelDraw 16 since it came out, no complaints... But it started to "mysteriously" messing up, acting weird, and crashing right about the same time they started pushing CorelDraw 2020.
I switched to 2020 and it has been crashing, taking long pauses for no apparent reason (I have auto backup turned off) & it seems they took out a bunch of good features or made them 3 steps longer.
What's your take on the program?
 

unclebun

Active Member
I found it to be far more stable than 2019. There are actually a lot of new features since 2016 that are useful. Perspective controls on photos. blend to nothing. Lots more.

But if it's crashing, and your X6 had started crashing, it's more likely something wrong with your computer rather than something wrong with Corel Draw. Both X6 and 2020 versions are good versions.
 

E Coloney

New Member
I've used X3, X7 and now 2019. Each version had some clever new features. I find 2019 to be temperamental and am inclined to reload WINBLOWS 10 and then reinstall Corel before anything else as I use it so much. Keep in mind, just as the Apple has proven with their products, the more they tweak the icons/features, the more unstable it is and you must reboot/restart more often. When things start behaving mysteriously, that's a good indication of time to reboot/restart.
 

unclebun

Active Member
I've used X3, X7 and now 2019. Each version had some clever new features. I find 2019 to be temperamental and am inclined to reload WINBLOWS 10 and then reinstall Corel before anything else as I use it so much. Keep in mind, just as the Apple has proven with their products, the more they tweak the icons/features, the more unstable it is and you must reboot/restart more often. When things start behaving mysteriously, that's a good indication of time to reboot/restart.
My argument against that is my experience that the 2019 version was perhaps the most unstable version I have ever used. On my main design computer, which has been in use for quite some time, every version since 2016 has been stable, 2019 was not, and 2020 is stable. And all those versions are still installed and able to run on the computer at this time.
 

Andy D

Active Member
When things start behaving mysteriously, that's a good indication of time to reboot/restart.
The "mysteriously" I was referring to was in a previous thread I started, before I switched to 2020, I wrote about everytime CorelDraw 16 crashed or when I closed it down, a "upgrade to CorelDraw 2020" internet
page started to pop up, even though I had not updated CorelDraw 16 & had the auto-update turned off.... seems sketchy to me.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Andy D said:
What's your take on the program?

I have CorelDRAW 2020 installed, but rarely use it. I kept CorelDRAW 2018 on my work desktop and X8 on my notebook at home. Versions CDR X8 and CDR 2018 are pretty stable.

CorelDRAW 2020 is a slight improvement over the bug-ridden disaster that was version 2019. Some of the bugs are gone, but then there are new ones. Just like CDR 2019, version 2020 can just crash right out of nowhere. Just not as often as CDR 2019. You'll be working, then the program freezes and the whole program window just disappears. Poof! Right along with whatever work you did that hadn't been saved.

I frequently use a 60 font super-family called Vito in my sketches. In CorelDRAW 2020 all five bold upright weights (compressed, condensed, regular, extended and wide) all show up as Italic. The font family works perfectly in previous versions of CorelDRAW, as well as Illustrator, InkScape and Affinity Designer. Vito was originally sold by TypeJockeys and now by Dots and Stripes type. Corel apparently messed around with how it handles font naming tables in CDR 2020. That's according to Thomas Gabriel, the guy who designed Vito. I contacted him about the problem.

I've also seen odd behavior with how Corel 2020 handles synced fonts from the Adobe Fonts service. Sometimes fonts just disappear, even though I'm logged into my CC acount and the fonts are working in other applications or an older version of CorelDRAW.

Zach Starr said:
Just delete Corel, and move to Adobe, things will get alot easier

Not necessarily. Adobe Illustrator has its own limitations. There is a lot of area where CorelDRAW and Illustrator do not overlap in terms of features. I am using Illustrator more and more however.

Several weeks ago Adobe rolled out the AI 24.2 update, which introduced the large canvas feature. You can now create documents with art boards up to 2275" X 2275". That's larger than the 1800" X 1800" max in CorelDRAW. Type objects can be set larger (Corel has a 3000 point limit). Still there's other tasks involving technical drawing where it's faster/easier to use CorelDRAW. But little by little Adobe Illustrator is getting better.

One factor where Illustrator seems far superior is maintenance. Corel has pushed out only one minor update to CDR 2020. Meanwhile Illustrator has had two significant point release updates and around a dozen minor maintenance updates. Adobe beta program for Illustrator is more open to users. They seem to be paying more attention to user feeback and feature requests.

Meanwhile CorelDRAW is feeling like a victim of abuse and neglect via its private equity bean counter owners, first Vector Capital and now KKR. The pricing and upgrade policy is onerous compared to what CorelDRAW used to cost per year to keep a license current. It's almost like they're trying to sabotage this software so they don't have to develop it anymore. With that in mind, I'm doing a little more to transition toward Adobe.
 

DPD

New Member
As an ex computer jockey I could go into a litany on computer software installation and use. Best I could tell you here is to look for a common thread among the versions. Is it the same Corel function each time? If it is then it gives you something to report to Corel. If it is not then you may be looking at an unstable OS. Windows has been known to become unstable. Worse yet, it could even be a HDD going bad.

I hope you can sort it out. Have you reported this to Corel?
 
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