But it delivers its claimed speed boost unevenly, at least on a basic Pentium 133. Draw and Photo-Paint 7.0 actually opened more slowly than their predecessors at test time. And while Draw delivered noticeable speed improvements, the new Photo-Paint rendered images at essentially the same pace as the old. Old and new versions also crashed at the same place in one test routine. And its Barista program, designed to create vector graphics for the Web using the hot new Java programming language, is essentially unusable at present, creating giant files and rendering designs with uneven accuracy.
Many CorelDRAW competitors make strong cases.
Micrografx offers several cheaper drawing tools. JASC's Paint Shop Pro looks a more attractive option for users working primarily with Web sites, and who don't need the fonts, clip-art and utilities. Adobe owns the top end of the market. Yet surrounded by these rivals, CorelDRAW 7 still makes a case for itself. Maybe Corel hasn't changed so much after all.