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Lion backward compatibility.

I'm curious if Lion is backward compatible with a few programs. I currently run Microsoft Office 08 for MAC, iLife '08 and Parallels 4 (Yes. I have a couple of "Have-to-have" Windows programs for my business). Will these still work with Lion or will I need to upgrade them. (Also iTunes 10.5.1)

I am also a little concerned about my Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner. The software is listed as "Power PC" in the software applications list (I'm currently running Leopard and it works fine).

I plan on doing a clean install of Lion (thumb drive) and re-installing my other programs. I'm just wondering if I'm going to run into any issues with the older software.

Thanks!
Don

15" MacBook PRO
OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard)
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

  • Asked by Don M from Kingston Springs
  • Dec 26, 2011

1 Answer from the Community

  • Answer

    If your Epson software is listed in the System Profiler as PowerPC, it will NOT work under Lion (no PowerPC applications will). A lot of scanner and photo printer users have been having issues with this, since for some reason Epson and others haven't rewritten their software to Intel compatibility since before 2006.

    There may be third party, shareware/freeware alternatives for your scanning application ("ViewScan" is one, I think), you can search. Epson may eventually release newer software (check their website).

    In the meantime, if you have enough drive space (50-60 gigs to spare), you might repartition your main HDD in two, and leave a smaller Snow Leopard partition in place. That way, you can boot in SL when you need to use your PPC apps. Parallels may even be able to create a virtual machine for SL (if itself is Universal Binary or Intel, I don't know).

    Word '08 and iLife '08 should work, but check them in the System Profiler to be sure (PowerPC = no, Universal or Intel = yes).

    • Answered by William W from Seattle
    • Jan 1, 2012