Fun experiment reveals just how incredibly backward compatible Windows can be

Whether you like it or not, it is probably fair to say that Windows is a staple on most desktop PCs. Unless you are someone who vehemently supports Linux or is a fan of Apple's Mac, you likely happen to have Windows installed on your system.

A lot of longtime Neowin readers have probably had their fair share of Windows-based PCs, even though some may have later switched over to the other side.

Users have also shown an affinity for sticking to older versions of Windows as the newer offering, perhaps, just hasn't been up to their taste. This is quite evident from the market share reports, which suggest less than a third of PCs have Windows 11 on them, as many have preferred staying on 10.

A similar trend was noticed back with Windows 7 as well since people were quite dismissive of Windows 8 as Microsoft had, rather foolishly, removed the Start button.

Some may even argue that Microsoft is trying to force people to upgrade to Windows 11 with mandatory hardware requirements. While that's the story of the hardware side, the compatibility of the software can be a bit of a different matter.

A Twitter (now X) user, Niko, did a cool little experiment where they managed to run Microsoft Office 95 (version 7.0) on Windows 10 Enterprise edition, build 15063.

The post was shared by another Twitter (now X) user, WinExperiments, who is the developer of the Windows modding app Rectify11. He explains the process:

How was this done?

First, 32-bit Office 2021 was installed on the computer, then Office 95 (without Excel) was installed, then the Excel Spreadsheet button was clicked on Word 95. I assume the API calls are still the same so you get this beautiful UI amalgamation 26 years apart.

You can view the video below (if the below-embedded video does not load properly on the first try, refresh the page and wait for it to load):

This shows that plenty of underlying code is probably the same for these modern software. And aside from some major issues or glaring bugs, there is probably not much wrong with this either. As they say, if it's not broken, why bother fixing it?