I have just recently had my hands on the new Office and it is a problem
- though not just with this extension. When you save a document in the
drop down box you can chose which extension to save as. There is a
choice to save as .doc.

Over Christmas holiday a local real estate agent was trying to wrap up a
contract. She completed her end of the contract and emailed it to the
client. She had just purchased a new computer with Vista on it. The
person she emailed it to works for a very large oil company and their
internal email security software stripped out the document because of
this new extension. It took some time to figure out the problem.

I installed OO on her machine, copy and pasted into OO Writer, did a
little format clean up and sent it on its way.

Im sure MS is just doing that to keep MS users paying for something.

"Im sure MS is just doing that to keep MS users paying for something." That's
one way of putting it... but then again the MORE people who realise it - the
MORE might turn over to other OS and OO/Koffice.

Just in case you want pdf in windows in future i've found PrimoPDF
excellent... and free. But now i've turned to Linux so ...

To convert any document to pdf I use pdfCreator/Blender (more from
http://www.spaceblue.com/pdfblender/). You would also need ghostscript too.

MS changed the format for its Vista launch. Guess they have the right to
do so.

Well sure they have the "right to", it is their software. But all it they
are trying to do is force people to upgrade when they really don't need to.
But hell, what else would we expect from them right?

Past few days I have received quite a few emails from clients who either
received or purchased for themselves or their family new Vista
computers. If Vista itself didn't cause them some immediate problems the
office program that came with their system did. In at least four
separate instances I have received a text message or chat message asking
how to open some file in Word or Excel. The reason: in each case I have
OO in their offices and now with their new systems when they receive
documents from someone they are in OO.

I don't begrudge anyone of making money or even a "profit" but MS does
so usually at the expense of their client - and their profits are
usually a killing.

Oh! Ubuntu is getting installed on seven clients systems in the next two
weeks....

MS warned of the new file format well before Vista hit the streets.
This kind of thing happens on every new feature even in Linux.

Thre is an easy MS fix for old word files etc.

But the average person didnt know this. These realtors dont know this.
They just purchase a computer, want to be sure to get Office and expect
things to work.

Either way, I have been working on two office's and they are now set up
on Ubuntu with OO.

Im not saying that different formats from any app dont cause trouble
but, combine a new format with a new interface and a new OS and you have
a person, have a business who is ripe for making a change to something
that just works.

The sellers of new computers do that by putting
the new system as first install.

I am not here to defend MS because I use Ubuntu as well but MS paranoia
is daft.

I am not even sure what your first paragraph meant. You contradicted
yourself. As far as being daft, I believe anyone that defends
Micro$oft is an uninformed moron. Who said anything about paranoia?
They are a monopoly ACTING like a monopoly, which in the good ole USA
i not legal.

I am very new to Ubuntu and I encountered the same problem. I suggest saving
docx files as doc files on a PC with Office 2007 (there are the options in the
file menu, save as.
Under Ubuntu now I have trouble twith Internet connection.