Well first off I believe illustrator files are practically eps files as is. I believe if you just rename them to eps they should function as an eps but I'm not 100% sure. All I know is that you can open AI files with Adobe Acrobat Reader which if you have Adobe Acrobat Professional (The paid version) then you can probably easily convert ai files to eps through that. I know Illustrator has script options as well so there possible is a script out there for you that will start converting your AI to EPS for you. Though if you just renamed them to PDF then you would be set without the work. I know coreldraw and other programs can open pdf files as well. I prefer pdf at my work since it usually compresses the artwork instead of having them in uncompressed EPS files.

Now for your second question. The trick around the bitmap image is just rename the file.EPS to file.PS then coreldraw will see it as a postscript file and that should allow you to see a vector file. Course again you could just make it a pdf and that will do the same thing as a PS file. Though there is a catch to PDF, EPS, and PS files. Since you will be taking it out of its native program then you might lose a few things in those other programs. If your design is very complex you might lose a few things or even have your linear fills and screens coverted into bitmaps. Just something to watch for everytime you convert a file, I always test the file I convert and view it before saving it for a customer in that format.

Hope this helps.

To batch process AI to EPS files, do the following (NOTE: I've got Illustrator 10 in front of me right now, so maybe some of these instructions might be slightly different in CS. I'll check later and confirm).

1: With no documents open, open the Actions palette (Window > Actions)
2: In the fly out menu on the Actions palette, choose New Action and give it a name (say, AI to EPS)
3: Click Record.
4: Open one of your AI files
5: File > Save As... and save it as an EPS file.
6: In the Actions palette menu, click "Stop Recording".

Now you've got an action that can be reused time and again. Put all your AI files into one folder, and create another folder where you want your EPS files to go. In the Actions palette menu, choose Batch...

In the dialog that appears, choose your action (AI to EPS) and make sure Source and Destination are set to Folder. In the Source section, press Choose... and pick your folder with AI files. Also check the "override Action "Open" Commands" check box. In the Destination section, check the "Override Action "Save" Commands" box.

Click Ok, and go make some coffee. I would suggest just putting a few files in the source folder first, just to make sure everything is ok. There's nothing worse that finding out after an hour that they've all been saved with the same file name....

>>I've opened EPS files created by Illustrator in both other programs (Corel and Freehand) but was not able to edit them, they were treated like an imported bitmap<<

Try importing rather than opening.