Corel corporations Ontario HQ before an aircraft fell on it!
…..almost certainly, or is it?
As I sit here becoming increasingly exasperated (and angry) I considered writing a mildly (hopefully) offensive note to Corel Corporations customer services, and then I thought no, I’d enjoy myself and write an equally futile episode in my blog posts 🙂
I have an issue with my old, and rather wonderful, wide format printer. I bought the thing, second hand, the best part of twenty years ago and it still performs faultlessly. The issue lies with it’s compatibility with a graphics program called Corel Draw; and it’s driving me up the bloody wall!
I’ve been using various editions of Corel since about 1993 and my last version was pretty old, at least as old as my printer, and worked faultlessly until Windows 11 when, predictably, it started misbehaving. Something had to be done so I bit the bullet and bought Corel 2024 and, quelle suprise, it’s full of shiny ‘good ideas’. What a disappointment!
Twelve year olds should be in school!
One of the best features of Corel, in the long term, was that it didn’t change – the way it worked, from edition to edition, was seamless. Well, it isn’t now! Suddenly I have to re-learn most of the damn thing. I know, I know, it’s the way of the world and I have to accept the fact that software companies are employing twelve year old programmers who have never actually used the program they’re developing. Oy vey (Damn! I promised myself I wouldn’t use Hebrew expressions after the Gaza episode and there I go again!)
As irritating as that is I can live with it and I’m quite sure that were I a twelve year old I’d be as enraptured by Corels functionality as I ever was. What I can’t live with is the programs inability to print an image file, of any description, on my fabulous old printer. This is something my old version could have done in it’s sleep. I know I’m in trouble as soon as I open print preview and see the washed out version of my print – and that’s exactly what it prints! I fiddle with this, I fiddle with that, nothing works.
Surely there’s a Help Desk?
Well, there is, after a fashion. It’s obviously AI and, to give it credit, gave me a very comprehensive list of things to check. Trouble is none of them worked.
Then I had a brainwave. I have Corel installed on my wifes computer: I’ll see if I encounter the same issue on that! Alas. Corel might be resident ON the computer but I never installed it. Never mind, onward and upward, I’ll do that now. Not a chance; ‘the account you have created already exists’ – OF COURSE IT DOES, IT’S MY BLOODY ACCOUNT! None the less, I’m on the loop from hell!
Don’t dispair young Bonner
There must be an alternative surely? I shall search the web. Oh, look, a little app called Epson Print Layout (my printer is an Epson Stylus Pro 9800) It looks good, I might have sussed it! Actually, no. Despite the fact it seems to offer a roll paper option it still needs you to choose a paper size from it’s menu of options. I choose one, I print – it’s printed an image ten centimetres larger than my artwork and it’s printed it in the wrong format straight up the middle of my paper roll!
Is it wrong of me to wish for very small and localised thermo nuclear blasts simultaneously in Ontario and Silicon Valley, or that the clock might be reset to 1980 before computers appeared on the scene? When I still had my youth and, with my paint brushes, could earn a living I might add. I’d best pop outside and check – deprived of their computers aircraft might be falling out of the sky any moment now!
Thanks for reading,
Pip, pip,
#CorelDraw #CorelPhotoPaint #Corel2024
ps. Google tells me the term I used above ‘quelle suprise’ is only used 0.01 times per million words in English. Wow! I knew my language could be obscure but I think that’s something to be proud of 🙂
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