Illustrator CS can open CDR 10 and under files, as CMYK or RGB.

I use both Illustrator CS and Coreldraw 12, and honestly there's not a lot of difference between both. There both just as good for vectoring.

Thank you William,

I appreciate your input. The conclusion I have come to is to Keep on using X3 and upgrade Photoshop.

I will try some of the tricks mentioned here regarding pre processing as well.....

Thanks again for your help.