Older Clients & Wallets I have about 5 BTC stored in Wallets created under different versions of Bitcoin, all encrypted with multiple backups.
I downloaded latest Client and it doesn't work with the wallets, I've gone back to an earlier client and it works ok.
I assume there have been changes over the past year or so.

I don't have time to figure this all out and try out which Older client works with which backup wallet so I can send my few BTCs to a Brainwallet address and dump the old wallets.

Can I assume that because they are in wallets with backups, encrypted etc that the coins are safe and I just need to go through the trouble of recovering them.
I've heard about pywallet and have tried manually dumping the private keys so I can transfer the coins but so far no luck, it's all Greek to me.

Can I assume the coins are safe (providing the wallets are not iredeemably corrupted, and that one day soon, when I have time I should be able to recover them.
Your coins should be safe.

No need for a brainwallet:


open the new client and create a new address
backup this new wallet
open your old clients and send your coins to that new address


Never delete the old wallets anyway, just in case.