I've been using vector progs for quite a few years - since 1992 -, and in my opinion, nothing beats Inkscape.
Being a signmaker, worked with Corel, Illustrator, Freehand, Flexisign... And Inkscape has the faster and best node editing tool of them all

My DA gallery with some of my personal stuff:
http://fergusthefiddler.deviantart.com/gallery/
Cheers,
Fer