MS dumping Win95 support in next version of Office?

Microsoft is casting Windows 95 users adrift with the next version of its Office suite, according to some small print spotted by WinInfo. The release notes for Beta 1 of Office 10 specifically state that the software "will not function on Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.5x, or Windows 95."

Exactly why it won't function is of course the $64,000 question. Win95 and Win98 are sufficiently close for it to seem a pretty trivial task (maybe even no task at all) to make a piece of code run on both. And while it's possible that Microsoft doesn't actually mean it "will not function" on 95, but that it's just not a supported platform for the beta.

That'd be fair enough, but as the notes also state: "We have done little testing with Windows ME, so we recommend against using this beta version of Office on that operating system," the company can clearly say 'unsupported' if it wants to.

So does Office 10 run on Win95, and if not, why not? Surely Microsoft hasn't started breaking its own software...

We'd appreciate hearing from any testers out there who'd care to give it a whirl, and let us know what happens. ®

See also:
WinInfo story