CS5 compatibility with Mac Or Windows 10

Question

Hello,I realize this topic has been discussed some but hoping I may be able to get some more/different answers.  I have an iMac and bought illustrator and photoshop shortly after which was probably 2011 or so.  I have CS5.1 of both illustrator and photoshop.  I have done all updates to my mac with no issues until the high sierra update which I unfortunately now realize has caused them to no longer work.  I went from El Capitan which it worked fine with other than after I purposefully closed the program it would tell me that it quit unexpectedly.  No big deal.  Since I paid a hefty sum and these programs are essentially for personal hobby use I don't really want to pay $300 to $600 a year to subscribe to creative cloud.  Just too much for my very infrequent and basic needs from the programs.  But I may use one of the two once a month so I will essentially need to subscribe every month.  So here are my questions/options I am considering:A little background beforehand.  I own a vinyl cutter which I design vectorized art in illustrator and send to the vinyl cutter.  As of a month or so ago when I looked it appears that there is no plugin currently offered yet to communicate/run my cutter from CC 2018.  So I am just kind of screwed all around.  The vinyl cutter is also just barely 7 years old if that.  So because of apples high sierra update I have a $1600 computer, a $1700 vinyl cutter and $800 worth of programs I bought that are now no longer useable for what I bought them for.1. I was planning to purchase a windows based computer and install my illustrator and photoshop on it.  However, from reading one forum question I browsed over it looks as if CS5 may not work on Windows 10 either?  I am also able to get my hands on a CS6 version of illustrator if needed and have been told it is compatible.  If I am able to use on Windows 10 OS will I need to save all of my illustrator files as EPS files before trying to transfer them over to a Windows OS computer?  I have quite a bit of art that I have created that I want to be sure will transfer over.  Someone mentioned to me that there may be type compatibility issues. 2.  Roll back my OS to El Capitan.  I am not that knowledgable just know enough to get by and am a little hesitant on this option.  A little beyond my realm of expertise.  I also like to keep my mac updated as sometimes they mention updates to security.  I do all of my online shopping etc on my mac so I figured that may be important.3.  Purchase Coreldraw or another program that could do the same needs.  I like illustrator because I am somewhat familiar with now so I would prefer to stick with that.  I know my vinyl cutter is also compatible with Coreldraw and it appears that you can open AI files in Coreldraw.  Has anyone used the program and have any likes or dislikes about it compared to illustrator?Thanks in advance for any insight.

Monika Gause · Accepted Answer

1. Windows 10 and Illustrator CS6 are not compatible either. Or at least this combination doesn't work all the time for all of the people.

2. Downgrading your Mac might be your best option. You could search for assistance in Apple User groups.

3. Opening your files in Corel Draw might or might not work. For simple files it will work better, for complex files maybe not so much. You might lose editability, depending on what features you used. Brushes will be expanded, live paint object will be expanded. The version must be higher than X5.