British software developer Xara is well-known for its cheap, easy-to-use Web graphics software for home and business, such as WebStyle and MenuMaker. But its eponymous flagship product, Xara, is unusual in its universal appeal to everyone from professional designers to home users. This is because it too is cheap and easy to use, yet the X1 upgrade makes it faster and more versatile than ever for general graphics work.

First, be aware that Xara is a pioneer. Xara was the first program to let you edit graphics in preview mode, at a time when the big names such as Macromedia FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator still forced to you work exclusively with wireframes. It was also the first to apply anti-aliased rendering to vector artwork. The same goes for simple gradient fills, feathered edges, live object blending, special vector effects and so on. Very importantly, it was also the first graphics program to dispense with dialogue windows, instead turning the most common editing options into simple slider controls in the main interface, no 'OK' button required.

Now in Xara X1, all editing is 'live'. For example, when you click and drag on an object, you see the entire object being dragged, not just an outline. There's no clicking and waiting for the object to load, or any delay while the screen catches up: Xara X1 just gets on with it. Unlike other programs, this feature works instantly whether you are editing a single object or a group of 300. Objects blends (intermediate morphing shapes between two objects) update on-screen in real time as you edit them, as do contours, bevels, drop shadows and so on. This is especially impressive when dragging transparent objects over others, since you don't have to drop the object before seeing what the result will look like.

Simplicity is important to Xara. To a graphic designer, the interface might look a bit basic but that's largely because of the lack of palettes and dialogue windows. To a business user, though, the Xara interface has tended to look a bit unfamiliar and scary at first. But Xara X1 sports a more inviting interface for beginners, with big friendly tool icons and an extensive set of video-based tutorials.

It doesn't take long to find your way around, either: the context-sensitive toolbar provides just about all the functions you need, and even if you feel compelled to access the menus, there are only six of them. The few floating palettes which exist in Xara X1 are mainly reserved for browsing (clip art, fills, strokes, text, colours) plus a couple for document editing (layers, object/frame naming). A scrolling bar across the bottom of the window lets you pick stroke and fill colours quickly.

The big new feature in Xara X1 is its built-in Picture Editor. It's no Photoshop but nor is it meant to be. Instead, it's offered as an alternative to the Picture Viewer in Windows XP, with a similar look and feel plus extra functionality. Picture Editor lets you rotate, resize and crop images as you might expect, but also adjust contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpness settings using interactive slider controls. As well as being more powerful and looking prettier than Picture Viewer, Picture Editor works a damn sight faster, and you can use it on standalone images or pictures you have incorporated within your vector artwork.

Most of the other upgraded elements in Xara X1 concern expert functions such as CMYK colour-separated export and improved hi-res rendering for pre-press output. One nice touch is the new ability to create and export frame animations to multiple PNG files so that they can be imported into Adobe Photoshop/ImageReady as layers/frames for further editing.

But it's the combination of speed and simplicity which empowers Xara X1. Professional illustrators can produce complex, photo-realistic results with much less effort than would be required using FreeHand, Illustrator or CorelDraw. At the same time, the program makes everyday business and Web graphics a breeze for the non-artist.

Sure, there are things the program can't do - there is no 'symbols' feature for repetitive graphics or any spellchecker for text, for example. But as well as being the fastest and simplest pro-class Windows drawing package on the market, it's also the cheapest. With Xara X1 costing less than a third of its nearest rival, the real problem is trying to find reasons not to buy it.

The world's fastest vector graphics package just got faster. Imagine a high-quality illustration program that's easy to use and which never makes you wait for the screen to redraw, and you have Xara X1. Business users and pro designers alike will adore it.