Martin
That’s a remarkably good question, and despite all the years I’ve been using C1 components I’m never really considered that, nor do I recall seeing an 'install side by side’ option in their installer. Logic dictates therefore that if you were to install the latest version it would overwrite the existing dll’s of your currently licensed version.
That having been said You could simply rename the dll’s in the bin directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\ComponentOne Studio.NET\bin) and append .old to them all. This should prevent them being overwritten , allow you to evaluate the newer versions and when done remove the newer ones and restore the old ones.
As for the reports themselves I don’t think that you should have any problems running older reports in the newer controls.
I would hope that there is a n easier way to evaluate newer versions but truthfully I can’t think of one. Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong on this one!
Dom