Microsoft Thwarts Backward Compatibility!

In a strange move… Microsoft has removed support from it’s Office 2003 suite for old document formats in a new Service Pack!

Microsoft’s planned obsolescence smacks Office 2003

“It seems as though the planned obsolescence that Microsoft committed so blatantly in Vista is now impacting Office 2003, too, with the arrival of Service Pack 3. If you need to access old Microsoft file formats for early versions of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint — but you’ve suddenly and dramatically found yourself unable to do so — there’s an intentional reason from Microsoft behind that conundrum, according to a bulletin put out by Microsoft last month. The reason for the unexpected incompatibility is that, by default, the SP3 update, which became available in mid-September, blocks the file formats used by these older desktop productivity tools from Microsoft. Moreover, the same also holds true for the file formats used in older versions of products that just so happen to compete with some of Microsoft’s software offerings, such as the multi-platform Lotus Notes and Corel’s Quattro spreadsheet and Draw software.”