I have vague memories of fixing problems like this by switching off fast save. But having Googled for it that might be a word version or two out of date :
http://www.lookgood.demon.co.uk/txt_fastsave.html
Have you tried open office? (
www.openoffice.org) download free from:
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
I use it on my laptop and Word 2000 in the office, no problems transfering files between the two, in the current version - even track changes is compatible. Open office files are consistently much much smaller than the word equivalent.
I have just converted a document, the word file is 19k, the open office writer file is 11k. The look the same and print the same.