Adobe vs Corel

Now I downloaded 'Corel paint shop pro photo x2' a couple of weeks ago to try out their 30 day free trial. It had a good review on 'trusted reviews'.

Now I initially thought that my PC was maybe not powerful enough to edit photos as it was taking about 3 seconds to apply changes to any photos I was working on in Corel. I found this a bit disappointing as I kind of thought my laptop would handle photo editing easily enough.

Core 2 duo 2.33 with 2gb Ram and 256mb Gfx card. It also has a fast 7200 rpm HDD.

At this stage I had decided not to bother with Corel as I assumed since my PC was struggling to edit photos that I was better off waiting and buying a more powerful machine next year. That was until I downloaded Photoshop CS3 Extended which also has a free 30 day trial.

Now I know the price difference between the 2 is huge and I reckon I know why as my laptop blazes when using CS3. The same type of editing of a picture with CS3 takes a fraction of a second compared to 3 seconds on Corel??

I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this experience or is this simply a case of 'you get what you pay for!'

I have no experience with Corel, but some programs give trouble with dual cores and require a bit more care installing.

For a cheaper option, you could also get Photoshop elements (but if you want to keep on editing high bit images, that works less.

Cheers I'll check it out.