I may have found my own solution.... I'll post here for any other lost
souls..

I had a thought that the difference between systems might have been
Word's Normal.dot file, which is the base template for New documents.
So I created my own .dot file and included it with the VB app
distribution, and used it as a template when creating the new Word docs
with the sctterplot graphs.

VB6 code:
Dim oWord As Word.Application
Dim oDoc As Word.Document

'Start Word and open the document template.
oWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
oWord.Visible = True
oDoc = oWord.Documents.Add (Template:= _
App.path & "\Template.dot" _
, NewTemplate:=False, DocumentType:=0)

So far so good, the client is reporting no scatterplot distortions...

Hope this helps someone else.

-Chris


--
Hubris00