Corel lays off 18% of work force

[dArKeR]

Corel Corp. is laying off 18 per cent of its global work force six weeks after being taken over by San Francisco-based investment firm Vector Capital.

Corel, formerly a publicly traded company that delisted its shares after the takeover, had about 660 employees when it was bought by Vector for $120 million (U.S.). That would mean about 120 jobs were cut Thursday, with the bulk of them in Ottawa.

The layoffs affect all areas of the company, Corel said.

“Today's decision, though difficult, was necessary to eliminate the additional costs associated with public ownership and meet the company's business objective of profitability,” Derek Burney, Corel's president and chief executive, said in a news release.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031009.wcorel1009/BNStory/Business/

[arcane1]

1. may I be the first to say..

F*ck investment firms...

:grr:

[Faygo Kid]

2. More bonuses for the top guys!

Check out what the Big Boys on top will make in bonuses this year for cutting the throats of their workers. GWB's American Dream!

[UpInArms]

3. "Chainsaw" Al

must be so proud! /sarcasm hopefully off

[0007]

4. I'll take Corel Word Perfect any day

over any other word processor. I love it!

[RC]

5. OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org/

Whatever you are running it will work

Windows | Linux | Mac OS X (X11) | Solaris

[mbperrin]

7. Thanks!

n/t

[0007]

9. I'll ck. it out

*

[arwalden]

10. CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint over Adobe's Products ANY DAY!!

I'm still befuddled why PhotoShop is the "standard" when PhotoPaint is so much more powerful and easier to use.

-- Allen

[LightTheMatch]

6. Sheesh!

Such a poorly run company. Will they go out of business already?!?!?!

[ET Awful]

8. Corel has been near death for years . . .

Yet somehow they keep hanging on.

They made quite a few choices that appeared good at the time, but didn't generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile.

Buying WordPerfect after its short ownership by Novell was a good idea, but poorly timed and just a little late to create with Miscrosoft. I was a huge WordPerfect fan in the early 90's, but by '97 or so it just wasn't worth it anymore because Word had become pretty much the world standard.

Their CorelDraw package has always packed a hell of a lot of punch for the money. Getting vector drawing, image editing, 3D modelling, etc. all in one suite of products that costs less than a single Adobe product was always nice.

I like alot of their products, but it seems like they are now and always have been an "also ran," and never had a dominant share in any market.

I like the company, and their products, but they just never seemed practical to me.

[FlaGranny]

13. WordPerfect

used to be a much better program to use, in my opinion, but it got knocked out by Word. I still absolutely hate some of the features in Word after years of using it (because I have to, not because I ever wanted to). For word processing WP was just more intuitive and easier to use. It probably still is, but I haven't used it for several years so I don't know what later versions are like.

[Love Bug]

11. As a PC user, I've always like CorelDraw

However, since the graphics community is still Mac-oriented, Adobe reigns there. I understand Corel products are available for Macs, but they came out long after Adobe grabbed that market. I don't know any Mac user who uses CorelDraw or Paint.

[Northwind]

12. My only great fear

Is that Painter, already having been tossed around through several corporate mergers and sell-offs, will die...

Note: Not PhotoPaint, which is crap, but Painter, the former Fractal Design and then MetaCreations painting application.