<p>A few hours ago, I started a thread on the issue of whether or not it's OK for a kid to go off to college with a new computer with Windows Vista on it. The issue here is that some colleges aren't yet ready for Vista.</p>
<p>But I talked to my son the computer science major a few minutes ago, and he said that Vista isn't the real problem. What's more important is whether the computer has Office 2007 vs an older version of Office. Apparently, they are not completely compatible with one another. </p>
<p>The problem is that documents saved in Office 2007 are (by default) saved as .docx files, which are not compatible with Office 97-2003. However, with Office 2007, you can certainly choose to save files as .doc files which are compatible. Also, Office 2007 can of course read any files created by earlier versions of office.</p>
<p>Hence, there are no problems with getting Office 2007, and the only compatibility issues that could arise are if people don't get Office 2007 as they will not be able to open the files generated by Office 2007 (by default).</p>
<p>So if a student with Office 2007 is attempting to turn in a paper online but the professor doesn't have Office 2007 yet, all the student would have to do is save the paper in the old file format? You can do that?</p>
<p>I think there may be some features, which may not transfer over, though, but I personally haven't experience any problems in doing this. For example, the equation editor in Word 2007 is pretty different from that in 2003, and so trying to save equations in Office 2007 in 2003 format might have some problems.</p>
<p>edit: I just tried this, and it was pretty smart about it. It said that Word 2003 format could not support the equations, and so to save it will convert the equations into images which cannot be edited. So in principle there could be a problem where your son needs to write out some equations, and a friend or professor will not be able to edit them because they have office 2003.</p>
<p>Marian:
Before you buy applications like Office, check with the particular college since sometimes they have very good deals on the applications - sometimes free.</p>
<p>The same problem with back-compatibility existed with Office 2000 vs Office 2003. Some things (esp Publisher or Powerpoint) in the new format couldn't be opened by someone with the old unless the person making the document knew to change from the default setting back to the older version. Even then, it hung up and announced that certain parts of the document wouldn't work if you saved it that way (for instance, animated clips in Publisher). It's a big pain for the first year or two - thanks for the head's up, because most people are focusing on the Vista vs XP issue.<br>
If you turn in you project in a format that the professor can't open, is it late?</p>