You should try and explain the differences to him then, because unless he understands you will always have problems due to the edition gap.
It's not just an edition gap, it's a game mechanics gap. He's revised 3.5 because he's created his own campaign world which obviously requires that you nerf everything 3.5 D&D so it'll fit.
apparently he's not comfortable with the power-jump from 2nd ed. to 3rd. -- he either needs to get over it and understand how the system works, or he needs to go back to AD&D.
Tell him to shit or get off the pot -- this fence-sitting crap doesn't fly.
What power jump are you referring to? The numbers got bigger in 3rd as compared to 2nd, and 3rd definitely gave the players a lot more control over building their characters. I think those were the biggest "power jumps".
As far as the power of magic and characters, if anything wizards were probably relatively
stronger in 2nd, as Fireballs actually did a crap ton of damage compared to how many hit points things had, and Stoneskin actually made you pretty much invulnerable to mundane damage. And they still had Wish, and all that crazy high level stuff, too.
Clerics weren't as strong relatively, but bards were a LOT stronger, as were most of the "fighting man" classes (the hit point differences were bigger, and they had better saves). And you could seriously go out and kill freakin' gods at the highest levels of the game. It is a lot harder to do that in 3.5, and it would be nearly impossible to even survive for a single round against some of them.
Also, if you played with pre-written modules, you'd wind up with more magic items than you knew what to do with, seriously. I can remember our group
throwing them away. I had my bard character start keeping them all as a semi-joke. You never know when that endless salt shaker might come in handy. Maybe we'll face off against a giant slug tommorrow!
