Frequently I’ll hear users talk about how they’ve increased the Memory Usage setting (at right) in CorelDRAW’s Tools | Options | Memory dialog box. Supposedly it has improved the performance of CorelDRAW. I hate to break the news to everyone, but it doesn’t do anything.

Back in Windows 98, the operating system allowed applications to fence off memory for themselves. That isn’t necessary in Windows 2000, XP and Vista. Given that CorelDRAW X3 and X4 will not run on Windows 98, the feature has been completely non-functional for a couple of versions now. The developers at Corel have admitted it doesn’t do anything. It is something that needs to be removed, and I suspect it will be removed in the next version. So if setting the percentage to a higher number makes it seem faster to you, go for it. The reality is that it has no effect at all.