Which verson of Corel to buy

[Tom Wakeley]

Hello all,

This is my first post. I have been lurking for a number of weeks, reading and attempting to understand what everyone is posting. I plan to buy a laser engraver, probably in the fall or early winter. I read one post that indicated it might be judicious to learn Corel before the laser purchase. I probably can't afford a new one so when the time comes I will be looking for a used unit.

My initial plans for the laser are home/hobby use to engrave pens. However I would like the option of an add-on rotary attachment and I would like to learn to engrave gunstocks.

The question I have is which version of Corel would be most adventageous for me to buy? Are used lasers capable of accepting input from new versions of Corel? That is, Corel versions released after the laser was manufactured. Corel seems to be very popular on your site. Are there other programs that might be better suited to my intended usage?

I have absolutely zero knowledge of Corel or any of those type programs.

Thank You,

Tom

[Frank Corker]

Hi Tom and welcome. I'm sure if you do decide to go ahead, you will do just fine. I would suggest that if you go for Corel you should go for the later versions X3 or 4, they have a lot of new added features which are very useful for the laser engraver, especially on the 'trace' feature. (No point in getting into that right now, but you would appreciate the upgraded capabilities that those two versions have)

As far as I am aware the majority use Corel Draw and it does appear to work with most machines, however I cannot answer for the Chinese laser group but I'm sure that someone will volunteer that information. Most certainly on the Epilog lasers the use of any of the Corel Draw versions work, on new and most of the older models.

[Larry Bratton]

Hello all,

This is my first post. I have been lurking for a number of weeks, reading and attempting to understand what everyone is posting. I plan to buy a laser engraver, probably in the fall or early winter. I read one post that indicated it might be judicious to learn Corel before the laser purchase. I probably can't afford a new one so when the time comes I will be looking for a used unit.

My initial plans for the laser are home/hobby use to engrave pens. However I would like the option of an add-on rotary attachment and I would like to learn to engrave gunstocks.

The question I have is which version of Corel would be most adventageous for me to buy? Are used lasers capable of accepting input from new versions of Corel? That is, Corel versions released after the laser was manufactured. Corel seems to be very popular on your site. Are there other programs that might be better suited to my intended usage?

I have absolutely zero knowledge of Corel or any of those type programs.

Thank You,

Tom
No less than X3. Some have said X4 is pretty much like X3 with little improvement. I tried X4 and I simply did not have the time to change to something I wasn't familiar with, but if you had X4 from the start it may be just fine.

[Mike Null]

You can download a 15 day free trial version of X4.

[Rodne Gold]

Check the laser works with a system capable of suporting x3 or 4. Ie with windows XP or Vista. Some older used lasers might just not.

[Wayne Morris]

I've decided to buy X3. (Much cheaper and I'll basically only use it as an interface between the laser and AutoCAD, which I'll continue using for designing. It will run on the older OS, (Windows 2000) on the computer I'll be using for the Laser. I found a download site where I got a 15 day trial version and started playing with it last night.

Wayne

[Stephen Beckham]

Wayne - I'd agree with the X3 for the reasons of less cost and 'almost as good as X4' from reading posts of people who already upgraded to X4.

I bought 12 when I got my laser and a month later X3 was released. I put it off and finally bought it five or six months later. I couldn't believe the difference - light and day in my experience.

Warning though - it's a resource hog (as I'm sure X4 is as well). I've got two copies of X3 now - one for the older home CPU and one for office system that's hooked to the laser. Point I'm getting to is the older CPU at home is bogged down and disapointing due to being an older system.

I heard it said once that you wouldn't hook an old 486 system to a T3 line. Putting X3 on an older system without lots of RAM and a decent processor, you might be disappointed with alot of "click and wait" scenarios... Be prepared to look into a new powerhouse system that will give you quicker response. You'll spend 2/3's of your time preparing an image for the laser to finish it in minutes if your older OS system is not strong enough. My 2 cents...

[Tom Wakeley]

Steve,

Thank you for addressing the potential "Resource Hog" issue. In my first post I should have added that based on reading the posts here I have purchased a new laptop. I asked the salesperson about running Corel Draw on the new computer. He went on line, looked up the requirements and suggested I buy a VOSTRO 1000, which I did. So I have a machine which I plan to dedicate to Corel Draw. One concern I addressed to the salesperson was the AMD processor in my new computer. Someplace on this site someone posted their dissapointment with an AMD processor while using Corel Draw. The salesperson told me that he could envision no potential problems using Corel Draw with the AMD processor on my VOSTRO. The computer selection was limited because I wanted XP not Vista. That said, he was a salesperson. I hope he gave me correct information.

Thank You,

Tom

[Brad Knight]

I'm actually using a Vostro 1000 right now. The only issue I would have with using this PC is that it is only single core. Dual-core and even quad-core machines are so cheap right now, that's what I'd go for.

Just so everyone knows... the 'core' are the number of processors. Nearly all graphics programs can use multiple cores to process info quicker by splitting up the workload. At the very least there are always a lot of thing going on... print spoolers, network drivers, anti-virus blah blah blah... and if Corel is heavily using one core... all of the background programs won't affect it nearly as much if you have more processors to deal with it.

Anyway... with this Vostro 1000... it does completely lock up the whole machine when I try and save large excel files for a minute or so while it's working on it.

Find a dual core machine if you can afford it. Oh, and the Intel vs AMD question... ehh... Intel will be quicker but AMD will be cheaper. The price vs speed comparison is pretty much a wash at this point... I believe. I'm going to build a dedicated machine when I get my laser and I'll probably opt for more money and a faster Intel processor with 4 cores. The cost of processors are cheap enough now that I'd rather spend a little more on the front end that way I don't have to worry about it for 3-4 years down the road.

[Stephen Beckham]

Brad - concur and as another side note, when doing research for large purchase of GOV laptops and desktops, we had to pro/con the whole thing out and figure out what the actual differences between the two processors. Obviously, some functions are going to work better on one chip versus the other - but to me working on a 1-bit brain, I couldn't really notice major differences.

The only other two draw backs were number of capacitors used in the manufacturing process and the amount of heat dispation. One dealt with leakage of voltages versus stabiltiy of voltage and the other how hot your legs were going to get on the airplane.

I'm working off of the Duo Core with 1G Ram right now and when I can afford, I'm going to a Quad Core with 4G. I want to be able to cook hotdogs off the bottom of my machine - kind of like a Tool Time Man's laptop.

[Bryan Cowan]

The resources difference between X3 and X4 (and nothing else) made me choose X3. I wasn't about to upgrade a year old laptop simply for X4.

[James Stokes]

I am running x-4 on an xp machine also a vista machine. I think xp runs it faster.