[eluser]2think[/eluser]
Good to hear you've been in the field about a decade before me and while I fully understand the reasoning you use for the Win 98 example but it seems to be only partially relevant.
You mentioned continuing bugs in the 1.7.2 base but many devs have overcome the bugs through patches, libs, etc. Not ideal but for many, it did work and continues to work. Being in the IT field for as long as you say, you would agree that any platform will have bugs, new or old.
I a solution to the OP who wanted what I would think was a reliable PDF. To my knowledge and after having downloaded a couple of 2.0 PDFs myself, it appeared there were versions that relied on an older User Guide with innaccuracies.
I couldn't suggest something that could give the OP an inaccurate way of doing things.
I don't doubt that 2.0 is better in many respects but I'm really uncertain regarding the experience/learning curve for new users without some items that were available back in the other versions.