While everyone has been concerned with rumors of Microsoft-busting and moaning about the registration procedures that accompany soon-to-be-released Windows XP, the folks at Corel Corp. have been quietly carving their own niche in the graphics/office segment of computing.

Improvements in their own line of products and recent and pending acquisitions have made them a more powerful force in the industry as they continue to compete for your hard-earned dollars.

By adding Micrografx and SoftQuad to their stable, which now includes Bryce, Procreate Painter 7 and KPT6, they shore up the market they had already established with Corel Draw, WordPerfect Office (which they had purchased from Novel a few years ago) and their line of software for Linux.

I've been playing with several of their products - the CorelDraw10 Graphics Suite ($499), WordPerfect Office 2002 Professional ($499) and Procreate Painter 7 ($499) - and have come to the conclusion, as with anything Corel touches, they all have improved with age.

But, for now, let's concentrate on the CorelDraw Suite. This has always been one of the top graphics programs available and has always been geared more to the artist within us than the graphics designer. The new version is no different.

Integration of the three programs in the suite - CorelDraw 10, PhotoPaint 10 and R.A.V.E. - is smoother than with older versions and the similarity of the toolbars in each program breeds familiarity rather than contempt.

I found that CorelDraw is much easier to use than other illustration programs, offering more tools and greater flexibility than Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. And the use of drag-and-drop tools for applying special effects such as drop shadows was quick and easy.

The two other components, PhotoPaint and R.A.V.E, don't offer the flexibility or features of their competition, but I'm not sure that it was their intention. They do offer the basics of what is available in Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, which gives you the ability to add photo and flash effect to your Web pages while in CorelDraw. But don't look to them for all the bells and whistles.

Other features of the CorelDraw suite include:

- A new color management interface that allows for more accurate color matching from monitor to print.

-An improved text editor, featuring paths that remain editable on the screen.

- A print merge wizard that enables you to merge fields with your document to a database.

- A new object manager that organizes layers, objects and master layers.

- A page sorter that offers drag-and-drop management of multiple page documents.

- Floating palettes can now be docked as tabs.

- Tool options are displayed in a property bar at the top of the screen.

- A variety of Web tools for creating rollovers and image maps.