EBarnacle -

I was perfectly happy with Office XP, which contained Word 2002. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided that Word 2002 was obsolete and it wasn't necessary to assure that new Windows patches were compatible with it, so about a year or more ago Word 2002 began to simply "crumble" and various functions began either to not work at all or to give erratic and unpredictable results.

When Word 2002 finally became too crippled to be functional, the only thing available was Office 2007.

When Office 2007 is installed, you have the option of leaving an existing Office version on the computer. For everything except Word I can use the Office 2002 (Office XP) version or the Office 2007 version "interchangeably." If I open Word 2002, however, it requires a "reconfiguration" that takes about 15 minutes before the program comes up. If I then go back to Word 2007, it takes about 20 minutes to "reconfigure Word" before the program comes up.

While I'm reluctant to abandon my customary jolly optimism, and hate to make dire predictions, based on my experience with Word 2002 you may expect your Word 2003 to begin to "lose functionality" beginning sometime within about the next dozen "WinXP Security patches" and the loss will be progressive until it quits working almost completely. The more arcane functions likely will go first, so you may not notice it for some time though.

Lin has Office 2003 on her WinXP computer, and hasn't noticed any deterioration - - yet; but she doesn't "push the envelope" by using many of the advanced features I was accustomed to having in my Word 2002. There are sufficient changes between the 2002 and 2003 versions that I'd have to spend a month on her computer to get familiar enough to see whether the problems I had are beginning to appear there, and haven't bothered to do that since she's still happy with what she's got.

After about 9 months with Word 2007, I may just go back to notepad. It's simply NOT A FUNCTIONAL program, for anyone experienced in wordprocessing and accustomed to doing more than typing straight lines of text. It does make it really easy to do the "amateur" things that people who like to publish "ugly" are so fond of; but it makes it almost impossible to do a "professionally acceptable" publication.

John