>No pictures in the report, just a bunch of columns and numbers. I guess what is obvious is that if you don't need the new features of VFP 9 for a report, why bother with using VFP 9's report behavior?

If you don't need it , don't use it :)

But things like text searching inside preview window or parallel redering and output to html/xml/pdf are nice features to have.

Check download #28296, I implemented text search in preview window.
Unfortunately, it is not so simple, you must rebuild ReportOutput and RepotPreview by yourself, because distribution of modified components are forbidden by EULA (this will be changed in SP1).

>When you say "with Image Writer as default printer," what do you mean? "Image Writer" is not bringing anything to mind, except an old Apple dot matrix printer that I used to own. <g> Please elaborate.
>

Office 2003 installs a virtual printer driver which outputs to "Microsoft Office Document Imaging" format, some PDF like format.

Regards