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What Was I Talking About Again? Serif and Corel Ramblings

No one better calls me "sanserif" no mores, says I! I have recently found a great graphics software company. Serif is a British company who seems to strive to compete with the big wigs of design. Serif's goal from its infancy in 1987 has always been to give the ridiculously overpriced software companies a run for their money. Adobe... Ahem.... I have to say that the products I have looked at don't quite measure up to the big boys, but they certainly show promise. I will be watching their progress.

I was privileged to see the rise and fall of Corel. They still produce some fine software, but their heads seem to be in the clouds, or the clouds are in their heads or something. At any rate, their idealistic goal of making supreme software that not only competed with the big names, but blasted them into shameful oblivion seems to be virtually lost. Their newest goals relate more to buying out smaller companies and adding to their ridiculously huge list of titles. In my opinion, this spreads their attention FAR too thin, and all their products suffer. If they had invested in their own flagship products, DRAW and Photo-Paint, they would be the best in the industry, no doubt. There was a time when those two names had more features, functionality and ingenuity than Adobe could ever dream of. Those Adobe execs would have been flushing their neckties down a filth-emblastifying toilet (the way of the future; no more sewage overflowing; send it all to Dimension X).

Because Corel is buying out seemingly dozens of other companies, their flagship programs have become yawn supreme to say the least. Rather than adding the features of these bought out applications to their own, they simply maintain the newly acquired titles alongside their own, an absolute foolhearty idea. If a person wants to get good functionality from Corel nowadays, they would have to buy all these newly acquired programs just to get the one or two cool tools or effects that makes each one unique. Why not combine them all into one vector program and one paint program. Get rid of Paint Shop Pro and Painter X! Grab all the great features of these programs and stuff them into Photo-paint's already fine toolset. I was your biggest fan, Corel, following from 3 to 8... But oh grieviousness, I get so upset to see what dumbness and numbness you have achieved of late. Corel needs me, I tells ya. They need a 2x4 smacked alongside the head to get them all straightened out. They'd still have a chance to be on top again.

Okay, now that I have sufficiently ranted about Corel - not at all my intended topic - I'll get back to Serif. Potentially, Serif is the Corel of the 21st century. I see them rising. I just hope they don't lose site of their idealistic dreams or sell out to someone who has dollar signs for eyes. It's like martial artists who go Hollywood after brilliance in Hong Kong (sorry Hollywood, you have no martial arts brilliance). They all stink and lose their religious convictions and commitment to beauty on screen. Don't sell out! Remain pure, I say! Ahem!... yes, back to Serif.

I made an online purchase for one of Serif's more promising products, Movie Plus 4. This would be their video editing software option. I suppose it could be compared to Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas. Interestingly enough, though Movie Plus is an extremely low cost option, it has some extremely robust features that put in the same league as some of the much higher priced applications. No, I won't claim it can compete with Premiere or other industry standard packages, but perhaps some day. Besides, for a mere $29, you can mess around with some astoundingly fun and powerful features. Some boring math... Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 costs $700. Divide $700 by $30 and you get about 23. So that means that for Adobe's price to be justified, they'd have to have 23 times the features, speed, reliability and functionality as Serif's product. I seriously doubt there's that much of a difference! I'd pick the $29 decent product over the overpriced $700 "industry standard" product any day. I can't stand paying just for a name. I shop at Winco and buy generics whenever I can. Well, I'm just a poor hobbyist when it comes to video. A poor hobbyist with a severely more powerful video editing application coming in the mail! I'll save the full review of Serif's Movie Plus 4 for the day I receive it - might be a delay, since it is technically one of my Christmas presents. I'll act surprised. I'm super anxious!

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