I just wanted to throw my hat into the ring on this as well. The screen shots that were shown here are exactly what I am experiencing on TWO different computers running Windows Vista 32bit - Home Premium version.
This is the response I got out of corel when I asked what was going on:
Dear Mr/ Ms Miller
Thank you very much for your e-mail.
What I can suggest is to do a disc cleanup, and then lower the number of undos. Sometimes, in todays megapixels/large filesize the program freezes due to the strain on resources.
Kind regards,
Joselito Capulong
Corel Customer Support
This totally confused me as to how they could answer with a comment like this, since I can't even OPEN the program and DO any "undos"!!
The SHIFT key option works just fine for me, but is annoying for me. I have also installed on both of these computers, Corel PSP X2, and that program works just fine.
Sure hope they fix this soon, as I am an Essentials Newbie.