I train people daily on MS Office, and like maybe 2% or LESS of the market customizes their menus or uses anything remotely like this feature in versions of Office up to and including 2003.

More often than not, I suspect people like Chuck are people who have NEVER actually TRIED nor USED the Ribbon/Fluent interface before dumping on it.

Newsflash, Chuck: Using the Ribbon ISN’T HARD.

In fact, it’s pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it, and it actually makes a lot of sense.

The reason why Microsoft changed the interface wasn’t to piss you off (though I know that makes a great argument for you all who just love to knee-jerk react on this topic), but to improve and make things EASIER for NEW users to find stuff.

I had lots of nightmare scenarios in my head when Office 2007 showed up on my desk.

I’ve been using it for years and as a trainer, change, especially badly implemented or poorly-considered change could be a real nightmare for me.

But I bit the bullet and I was very surprised when I got used to things a LOT faster than I expected.

It took me about 2-3 weeks to adjust, when I was in fact expecting a much longer time frame, or never.

Sure there are some things that could be in more logical places, hence the argument for customizability of things like Ribbon Toolbars.

I’m not saying that wouldn’t be helpful in the future, but for now, it’s probably as well people CAN’T change stuff, so they can actually USE it, which is WHY they DIDN’T make the Ribbon an OPTION.

Once you make something optional, then there is the potential for many people to just dismiss it (like you have) out of hand without even trying it.

I’m betting that Microsoft WILL put optionality AND customization of the ribbon in for 2010, but even if they don’t, you can still customize the Quick Access Toolbar, and that’s better than nothing.

The whole intent of QAT is to make sure that people didn’t go against the primary Ribbon functionality.

And that makes sense too – how many customizable crazy buttons can you work with before things become unmanageable and difficult to use in your day-to-day work?

I have about 8 or 9 very specific function buttons (like Document Properties and Import Export functions) which I use constantly on QAT, allowing me to focus my energy on the parts of the Ribbon that I need to use, and that’s what I encourage my Students to use…

Amazingly, they find this to be a relatively EASY and SENSIBLE method, and it doesn’t stop them from doing what they want in their Office apps, nor does it *ruin* their productivity, cause blackouts, astigmatism, or aliens to arrive…

The moment the ribbon becomes OPTIONAL (the way it should have been in the first place) allowing me to continue to use standard menus if I want to is the moment I start seriously considering any new OS’s from Microsoft.

To those of you who like the ribbon, yay for you. A large portion of the installed base do not, and there is NO compelling reason why MS could not have made the ribbon an OPTION.

Sounds like another OS X ripoff: This time, it’s of the QuickTime Player that will play almost any video format by default.

I can’t imagine how I lived without this fancier calculator until now.
Bryn, Windows does not equal PC.

I agree that nowadays the OS is less important. Most applications I use are web based, that’s why I use Linux. It’s free, it works. It can’t run many of the most popular games and has compatibility issues with some hardware, but that’s because game developers build games specifically for Windows and hardware manufacturers build hardware to be compatible with Windows. If more people used Linux that would change. There’s still is hardware you can use and games you can play, you just have to choose them carefully. This compatibility issues also happen with Macs.

Vista, the first week was horrible because of the starting and closing times, but after that, I can’t complain about anything – I see improvements in stability, funcionality and aesthetics.
I had to download new drivers for my 3G modem from the manufacturer (MS didn’t have them), and that took me… 4 minutes + restart.

Anyway, so far I see no reason to upgrade to W7.

The name of that little “Quick Access Toolbar” is quite telling incidentally, like a Freudian Slip type of admission that that Ribbon is “slow access”… :) And the Q.A.T. is really too small to be very useful, so with the Ribbon too large, we literally got the worst of both worlds.

I was very already very annoyed with the Office 2007 usability when fate intervened: One of the nightly Vista updates (automatic, which I then immediately turned off), killed my MS Word install. Several attempts to patch via the Office site, etc. failed, so I simply installed OpenOffice to hold me over.

Well, I’ve never gone back for the Word-processing, because the OO Writer is pretty much sufficient, and the menu is fully customizable still. The Spreadsheet program is fine as well, though I still use Excel out of habit (until another Vista update kills it off as well perhaps?).

The only MS Office software that I still deem essential is Powerpoint, the OO Impress is just not at the same level yet, neither are the Google Docs spreadsheets. Powerpoint can be pretty much used as a quick & dirty image editor among other things, due to Adobe’s labyrinthine ways (another story of poor usability). It’s still the most powerful preso software out there, and may be the only MS software one would still want to pay $ for. Get the $130 stand-alone PP version and be done with MSFT…

Let’s look at the big picture. Over time applications will move away from being written for an OS and towards being written for the browser. Yes these are early days and browser applications are still relatively primitive but the writing is on the wall in 72 point font. The end result is that the OS will become far less important.

Windows 7 may be nice and have more than just better gradient fills on the calculator buttons but if Microsoft does not embrace this browser-based future and tool up to compete toe-to-toe with this reality, Windows 7, 8 or 9 may be too little, too late. There is still time.