15 minutes of fame - My Corel Story

Well, possibly not 15 minutes, and not 'fame', but certainly not to be sneered at.

Here's the story. When I bought my very first PC back in 1988-ish, I also bought CorelDraw v2.00. The PC was a 386 SX with 1Mb RAM, and cost about as much as a small house in Yorkshire. I got CorelDraw because I was interested in graphics and illustration, and this seemed like the baby for the job. I messed around with it somewhat, and became quite proficient. After using the PC for about 10 minutes it became clear that I really needed 2Mb RAM, so I bought that almost immediately.

At that time, Corel were running the 'World Design Contest'. No, you didn't have to design a world, you just had to submit designs that you had made using their software. The contest ran for ten months, and each month they would select winners in about 10 different categories. Everybody who was placed first in a category for a particular month not only got a wunnerful prize, but also qualified to attend (at Corel's expense) the Grand Final in Ottowa, Canada.

I began entering the contest on a monthly basis, and one month I got lucky, was placed 2nd in a particular category, and won a thing called a CD-ROM drive. These things were in their infancy at the time, and when it arrived I had no idea what to do with it. But I was keen to win more stuff - one of the big prizes was a 486, oh how I yearned for it! The months went by, nothing, nada, zilch.