bapu

sammyp
i just restored my buddies win XP PC and gave him my Sonar 3 .... 

You do know that is illegal, right?. You cannot sell or give away any SONAR product. You are the license holder, not your buddy.
 

is his buddy allowed to give it back to him?

SONAR has been good about files created in newer version being able to be opened in prior versions (sans supported items from the newer version).

This changed when AUX tracks were introduced. Projects containing them cannot be opened in previous SONAR versions, so realize the limitations of "backward compatibility" of a project file. This would also limit collaboration or sharing of projects in a teaching environment.

I have to agree.  I simply LIKED sonar 5, and before.   While I use sonar platinum every day, I still don't LIKE it.  Often I HATE it. 

sammyp
Sonar 8.5 won't even open files authored in 2016. 

We are all used to programs being backwards compatible with older versions, but it sounds like you're expecting 8.5 to be FORWARDS compatible.
 
Not sure how that's supposed to work to be honest.
 

sammyp
 
You Changed the "copy" Command to cntl, alt, c  

 
That's news to me Sammy. But in retrospect, I typically copy clips with a control click drag.
 
 
Good luck - I wouldn't like going back to Sonar 8 again...

I too made a quantum leap and I'm still having to re-find ways to do things.  I think I like the new version better but there are still some things I miss (or cant find) in the new version. CAL anyone?
 
The VST/VSTI's are cool. Gotta love those! But wholly crap there are slews of drop downs and cursor controls and smart do-hickeys and nested sub-tracks and collapsed take lanes and post and pre and bus sends and becan fryers and ... But, I think it is better. I will be the first to say I'm just a hobbyist that doesn't spend as much time in it as most other seem to do so I know my exposure is limited.

DrLumen
...and becan fryers and ... But, I think it is better.

That sums it up nicely. 

Be aware that any upgrade of Platinum beyond Dec 2016 will screw up your 8.5 install/usage.
In particular the plugin manager.

AFAIK, the only problem with the plug-in manager is backward compatibility of menu layouts. Is there anything else? There is a pretty easy workaround to maintain the old plug-in manager for menu layout editing. The thread you  created provided the implementation details although there is a tool available to avoid having to use regedit to maintain SONAR tools entries.

The funny thing about these sort of threads is they always contain a threat to move to another DAW. That's hilarious :) 
As if that will be easier than sorting out the few changes that have happened to Sonar. 
 
I jumped from 8.5 to X3 Studio. It was no big deal because I had been following this forum so I knew what to expect. And after about a week I forgot all about 8.5. I opened it the other day to help a form member who was using it and it was nice a bright and cheery to look at. But man, there's no way we'ed get anything done using it now. There's a lot missing that we forgot about. As a matter of fact, I use the new version of Home Studio and that's about on Par with 8.5 pro. It's possibly even got more going on.