I've been a Corel Draw user since 2.0. And it's always been a fairly buggy program.

I purchased Corel Draw 10 and was very unhappy with it. I found it quite buggy (they didn't fix the Ctrl-Insert bug that causes Photopaint selections to go into ADD mode until manually put back with the mouse) and it has increasingly obnoxious copy protection -- I bought the upgrade to 9 and I have to install 9 and then install 10 to use it which is extremely annoying and time consuming.

What I want to know is if there is anything worthwhile in Corel Draw 11 that I should consider purchasing it?

The WinCustomize browser is nearly ready for general availability. It is available ONLY to WinCustomize subscribers (https://www.wincustomize.com/store.asp). If you are already a subscriber go here (https://www.stardock.com/support) and type in your email address to get the latest version.

The WinCustomize browser is the ultimate way to browse skins, themes, icons, etc. The new version integrates chatting and embeds Internet Explorer to let you browse other sites without leaving the skin browser.

Here are some screenshots:

https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize/sb1.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize/sb2.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize/sb3.jpg

The old guard (people who have been around for many years) represent about 1/5th of the respondants with veternas (people who have been around over a year but less than 3 years) making up the rest.

The reason for the explosion in new users and activity is open to debate.

My personal opinion is that every person who gets Windows XP from Windows ME/98 suddenly finds that all these customizing programs suddenly work really well for them and that they can then mold Windows into the design they want.

What's your view?

When you want to download a new shareware or freeware program, what are your top 5 favorite sites?

Check out the new Winamp! V3 is here.

It's frustrating. I go over to download.com and see user reviews on WindowBlinds:

http://download.com.com/3000-2326-10131236.html?tag=sptlt

And reading it, you'd think that WindowBlinds was junk. But we know it's not. We know it works really really well, especially on Windows 2000 and XP.

The problem is that on Windows 98 and ME, things get dodgy. Those versions of Windows have a limited number of GDI resources. So sometimes desktop enhancements (not just WindowBlinds) work perfectly and sometimes tweaking needs to be done to them.

According to the stats on WinCustomize, Only 19% of the visitors here even use Windows 98/ME. A year ago it was 45%.

This raises the question - how long should these cutomization unfriendly versions of Windows be supported? We're finding it to be a huge PR problem. People download customization software on their Windows 98 box, some percentage of them has problems due to the crummy neature of Windows 98/ME, and then when they eventually upgrade to a decent version of Windows they only remember that the software in question gave them problems and hence we end up with "I tried WindowBlinds and it was unstable" spread like gospel.

http://download.com.com/3000-2326-10131236.html?tag=sptlt

As I write this, fewer than 7 out of 10 people actually had a positive experience with it. Obviously there are some other issues involved such as registered users don't download the shareware so over time, the only users left downloading the shareware are people who have (for whatever reason) chosen not to register. But it's hard to help wondering that Windows 98Frogboy is also a major factor.

With only 1 out of 5 people on this site running Win98Frogboy in a world where 70% of desktops are running Win98/ME, it really demonstrates that those who are into customization or have a positive experience in customizing their comptuers are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Therefore, what do you think? Should support for Windows 98Frogboy users be phased out and if so when?

New to Windows XP or just want to know how things work? Visit Kelly's XP Korner, it has answers to tons of questions on Windows XP.

http://draginol.stardock.com/articles/xpskinning.html

We're adding an additional machine to the site this week to help speed things up and will be ordering an additional mega server to speed things up further. This won't alleviate bandwidth but much of the slowness is actually due to server load.

In the meantime, we have begun to ration site resources. So search features, daily screenshot, and other things will not necessarily always be available if there more users than the server can handle.

Don't thank us for the new server, thank the users who have been purchasing WinCustomize subscriptions these past couple of months. And as a way to thank them, we have made sure that subscribers (and Stardock customers) get first dibs on site resources when things get tight. So if you want consistent access to the features of the site, please consider becoming a subscriber (it's the equivalent of like 80 cents per month!).

To subscribe go here: https://store.stardock.com/addproduct.asp?PRODUCT_ID=ESD-SDS-W052

Part 2 of:

"So you've decided to destroy Windows?"

A series that takes you step by step in customizing Windows into your own personal ultimate operating system.