Hi Dwarkin,
Most small companies I work with usually do more in depth research on a major software purchase transition and its impact than some
larger companies, as the expenditure of monies is often more 'personal'.
It isn't possible to use the Office 2007 formats with versions of Office older than Office 2000. In part, because of the life
cycle, trying to test with all possible older Windows, not just Office and add-ins, etc configurations isn't really cost effective,
or practical, as the older models aren't being updated any more.
You can certainly create virtual machines if you like, but not sure why it would be Microsoft's job to do it for you.
Software
rarely comes with a lifetime warranty, and as far as ancient writings, there are folks that wish it was recorded on better 'storage
media', or that there were still people that spoke older languages so that there weren't multiple interpretations. Many of the
older disks, tapes, etc, may just from time, deteriorate to the point of being unreadable even in the correct device. It happens.
Of course, there are also folks who are new to computers who don't understand why it takes something as big as a 'desktop' machine
to get things done, or why it can't all be done on the pocketPC/Blackberry/Smartphone and for them that's where everything needs to
be, or with no prior experience, where it all starts
While folks have older data, much of it is moved forward with each new version if it's important, or transferred to newer archive
forms. That it may be inconvenient for you to be the one doing that, rather than having it done for you, without any cost, well...
And from experience, if MS did provide a converter, a VM, or scripts, folks would still find that to be problematic because it
didn't do this, or that, or why not this, or why wasn't every possible font included, or why is it different printing on my new
printer than it was on my 20 year old printer
It's not possible to meet everyone's wish/want list.
As Graham points out the information can usually still be opened by using, at your risk, the old filters, even with Word 2007. And
the 3rd party converter collections often cost less than one copy of Office.
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"dwarkin" wrote in message ...
Thanks, Bob, for the link. But: the "openness" You mention is not the most
of the customers outside companys with large admin-departments do not know at
all that they are going to miss access to elder files by migrating to 2007.
Microsoft -as near to monoply in the field of windows/office- has a
responsibility for information-content worldwide. Imagine paper in libraries
would be unreadable after a decade.
The way to use elder versions of office is unrealistic: You know about the
different problems using several versions of office on one machine.
And what we users donīt understand is: why is it possible to use
2007-formats under office 95 then? What is more likely: customers having
elder files or customers having elder software?
If Your arguments would be right, Microsoft should at least build
virtual-machines for free-download containing a windows/office-version for
any given-up file-typ without licence-restricitons enabeling users at any
time to take those old files into the VM, have them converted to the
today-used formats by scripts and have them printed to PDF or tiff by scripts
for documentation-reason (compliance). E.g.: today there should be at least
to VMs downloadable without license-restrictions: one for DOS and WORD/DOS
and one for win95 or 98 and office95 including the converters for
2007-filetype and scripts for the jobs named. If we admins would build those
VMs, we would violate Microsofts license-provisons.
Microsofts Bill Gates told about the dream of merely managing information
with computers rather than printed on paper. Then, the minimum feature to be
delivered is that customers can trust live-long access without being told
"find own solution". As You compare it to cars etc.: there is a big
difference. Information from yesterday is needed today. Or even mo
information from ancient rome or greece, the bible and so on are still needed
today. An ancient car from rome is not.
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*