[Drdrdrq]

>> I find the ribbon gui horrible. > You're in the minority.

Not so sure about that, I personally hate it too and know of many who have trouble with it. Its main problem is discoverability of features. With menus you could walk from first to the last to find the feature you needed (even if it was grayed out, signaling that you are in a wrong context to use it), while this is very difficult to do with ribbon bar. Especially as sometimes the feature is triggered via button, sometimes it is hidden behind a dropdown arrow, via some link... In Outlook 2010 I learned to search for features on the Internet because it takes too much time to look for them in UI. Awful UI, I hate it with passion.

EDIT: MS Office vs. Libre/OpenOffice: one reason is that I can install LO/OO on OS of my choice (Linux usually). The other is that I can install whatever version I want without licensing issues and cost. Last but not least, it has a normal menu. The only downside is interoperability - if it is important for you to edit MS documents 100% like you would in MS Office, then you really have no choice.

[RP_Joe]

And remember they are working with a world wide set of users. Many cultures do not like the fancy ribbon.