Photoshop vs. Photopaint or a short history of frustration

I've been working with images since time immemorial. Or actually since 1992-ish. Not sure when I started using PhotoShop but it was some time about then.
I got the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, I think, which I cherish on my hard drive because now everything is on the clouds and one doesn't get their Adobe crap anymore, one can only rent it and I'm paranoiac, old-fashioned and a luddite. Now, my good laptop died (1) and the borrowed one has some weird screen resolution that doesn't cooperate well with a secondary screen and it's too small for any serious work. (2) The hard drive doesn't rock either.

Digression
I started messing with graphic design in around 1991. I remember CorelDraw v. 2.0 that worked in the wireframe only. We had the first computers with Pentium processors in this country in 1998, ordered directly from IBM and the folks in the computer shop came to look and be amazed. The glories of living in a company that started in one's kitchen. The first software I learned to use was said CorelDraw. Later on, Adobe stuff found its way into our kitchen and adjoining spaces. I never really learned to use MS Office and similar stuff because who needs Word when there's PageMaker or shitloads of cool typesetting software - and there's no way I'm producing documents that lack graphic design. Similarly, I don't throw lousy snapshots around. Every image that leaves my dirty paws is 'shopped. Because I have some standards which are so deeply ingrained that they'd need to be surgically removed.
end of digression

I'm photoshopless and because I just don't do lousy pics, and I have an urge to post stuff all over the place, I had to resort to installing PhotoPaint from the Corel suite. I'm constantly struggling to find tools that are there under unfamiliar names or maybe they're not there at all, who knows.
I finally got used to my new camera to an extent, spring light is inviting and I've had an urge to plague the world with pics. I'm warning ahead that they may or may not be up to my standard because the combo of unfamiliar camera, unfamiliar software and odd screens may produce suspicious results.

My memory card is full, that's why I'm bothering with sorting out pics, not leaving it for later, whatever a later may be.
(Let's not start on the heaps of films from predigital era which someone should scan.)

______________________________________
(1) No, it's not only resting.
(2) Been slowly going blind since 1988. I only get frustrated when the coupons are for frames and lenses although they say "all merchandise". I don't need new $1000 titanium frames. I don't need a replacement for the $50 ones I got on sale, for that matter, all I need is lenses. Fuck you, opticians.