Dear Rick,

The "new" collects are NOT new compositions of the current reforms, but rather, along with the rest of the texts, retranslations of the Latin that took place shortly after Vatican II.  Yes you are right that some of the new translations are nothing like what we have now...  but that is part of the reason why we're retranslating everything in the first place... because the original English translation was so horrific that some prayers don't match the original at all.

So these "new" collects should be considered a "do-over" of the original Vatican II approved Latin texts which have NOT changed since Vatican II, although many of them were actually composed centuries ago.  Think of it as the English-speaking world catching up with what the rest of the Church has been using since Vatican II.

Regarding the Alternative Opening Prayer, as far as I know they were just inserted into the English speaking missal and are not universal.  Frankly, I don't think they should be missed.

Finally, about the terms "opening prayer" vs. "collect", they were to be used interchangeably, but the trend seems to be reversing the "dumbing down" of the Liturgy so we're returning to the traditional use of the proper noun "Collect" rather than the simpler but watered down description "opening prayer".  As a church we NEED to be making the little changes like this to reverse the trend of poor catechesis that has been plaguing us in recent decades.

Mr. Slavek