I'm not sure how many long time Maya users have noticed, but it appears Autodesk has quietly discontinued Maya 1.0 file support in Maya 2008. (This could include later versions as well, but 1.0 file support is all I've noticed so far.)
Granted, this may not seem like a big deal, after all that was a long time ago, and who still is using Maya 1.0 files anyway?
While consider that all of the original work you did back then is now in danger of becoming inaccessible. Just like if you'd stuck it on a CD-R and found that the dye used to store your data had faded into unreadability. Do you remember that thing you created years ago? Wouldn't be just perfect for this scene you're working on today? Ooops, to bad! All those man hours down the drain, thanks to some bureaucrat far removed form production reality.
It's good practice is to keep backups. We've heard it a million times. This means that the Maya is not a viable format of archiving your work. Even todays new users will eventually run into this problem.
Even if it's a big deal to provide file format support for older formats of the SAME package, it's just plain professional.
So in keeping with the purpose of this forum, I would like to request full past file format compatibility.
If you're in the same boat, don't uninstall Maya 8.0 from your machine. You now need it to update those files you made from all the way back in 1999. (Yup, there was 3D back then.)
-Aka
PS; There is much eloquent rant about on the same subject in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson.