A friend recently purchased a Vista system and then discovered old programs
wouldn't work with it.
Whenever a new operating system comes along, there is always a certain
amount of older software that won't work with it. My personal
experience with Vista is that, except for a couple of minor utilities
that I could easily do without, *all* the software I run works just
fine with Vista.
Your friend should look into the various compatibility options with
Vista. See, for example,
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-windows-vista-compatibility-mode/
or
http://tinyurl.com/3yy254
Using one of the compatibility modes, most (not all, but most)
programs can be made to work.
I heard this is true with the new Office suite not
allowing you to open and save files in old versions.
No, you are mixing apples and oranges here. You are probably referring
to Office 2007. First, note that this has nothing to do with Vista;
Office 2007 is not part of Vista. On the one hand, Office 2007 can run
under Windows XP; on the other hand, Vista can run older versions of
Office.
Second, there *is* a potential incompatibility between Office 2007 and
older versions of Office. By default, Office 2007 saves files in a new
format, and older versions of Office can't read that format. For
example, in Word, that format's extension is .docx, as opposed to the
old .doc.
However there are two easy ways around this issue if you need
compatibility with older Office versions. First, in Office 2007, you
can simply choose to "Save as," instead of "Save," and choose to save
in the old format. Alternatively, you can install the "Microsoft
Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File"
into the older versions of Office to let them read the new formats.
See
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...70-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en
or
http://tinyurl.com/y5a879