Office 98 and Office 2001 run in OS 9.2. The only way they will run on an
OS X machine is for the OS X machine to launch Classic, an internal version
of OS 9. Most people eventually start to hate having to go into Classic, so
your friend is probably going to want a native OS X program at some point.
Office X and Office 2004 run in OS X. Office 2004 is the most recent
version.
Office 98 is so outdated it might be possible to pick up a very cheap copy
for the OS 9 machine, then buy a new one for the OS X machine that he's
getting. MS still hosts the updaters for the older programs:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx
Or your friend will want to consider how upgrades will affect the pricing,
if he plans to buy Office twice:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/howtobuy.aspx?pid=upgrade
Word has a lot of power but it requires learning how to use it--if not doing
anything especially complicated, or not planning on exchanging documents
much with other people, there are other alternatives. Investigate Nisus
Writer, which has a free version, I believe for both OS 9 and OS X, and
Appleworks is a far less expensive suite of programs that serves the same
basic functions as Office. I think Appleworks 6 runs in both OS 9 and X
(although installing it on my OS 9 computer did seem to produce lots of
crashes). Saving as RTF will permit exchange of files and will be allowed by
any word processor.
If really getting a new Mac in six months, it's probably worth using other
options until then, by when he will know if he really needs to pay for Word.
The hidden cost there is learning multiple word processors, and possibly the
difficulty of later converting files created in that six months if he
doesn't use that program anymore.
DM
