I have used Corel for a few years, but switched to Adobe Illustrator - not because it is any better, but if you stick with Adobe products then they all play together nicely. However, I still prefer to work in Rhino because my brain likes CAD type functions instead of illustration/drawing functions.
If you are looking for something free, take a look at the OpenOffice package at
www.openoffice.org The computers at work run under Linux instead of Windows. The OpenOffice package is free and is a good substiture for Microsoft Office. Of interest to you would be the "Draw" program. It is vector based. Give it a shot for a couple evenings and see if you like it.
Henry