CeledyDraw 2

CeledyDraw is easy-to-use and an affordable under $100 option for those who want both page layout and graphics abilities in a single package. Excellent choice for home and small business users and high school students and teachers.

Pros

Cons

Similiar to CorelDRAW -- a vector drawing program with page layout features -- CeledyDraw is heavy on the graphics features but also has adequate, if not exceptional, text handling and typographic controls including multi-page document features.

CeledyDraw is designed for people without a lot of experience or training in desktop publishing and graphics. It is aimed at non-professionals who want and need a program more powerful than the typical consumer desktop publishing program but more affordable than the professional packages from Adobe and Quark. It's an excellent low-cost option for small businesses and home users.

It is feature-rich, especially on the graphics side, but with admirable page layout features including linking and flowing text between text frames, text and paragraph styles for quick document-wide changes, and text wrapping.

Most tools and actions are easy to figure out. There are a few commands that took a lot of clicking around to locate -- inserting new pages is found in the View menu, for example. No keyboard shortcut for zooming in and out was a bit annoying but for the most part learning to get around in the program is a snap.

Those who like to draw will be happy with the extensive drawing and special effects features. For quickstarts, there is a template gallery as well as a large collection of vector symbols ready to insert.

In addition to home and small business users, CeledyDraw 2 would be a good choice for high school level students and teachers. Celedy also offers discounts on software licensing for schools.