What is so infuriating about Microsoft's poilcy is that they don't believe that "if it ain't bust, don't fix it.
When I moved over to XP in about 2002, I acquired a copy of Office XP. It worked perfectly and continues to do so today. But now, they are fed up with this and want Office 2007 to be used instead. To assist in this, all new laptops seem to come with Office 2007 installd and the new purchasers use this software to generate .docx files. These of course are unreadable by earlier versions of Office, but now Microsoft have been obliged to release a large update which permits older versions of Office to read these files.
Office XP installs and works perfectly in XP if it is unmodified, but this software does not work properly in XP with the latest modifications unless Office itself is also updated. This is no doubt to make it more secure. I can forsee this software not working at all in Win 7 (even in "XP" mode) because Microsoft insists on trying to get more money out of us. "Open Office", here I come!
P.P.