The Ribbon interface was a massive upgrade in usability for the office division, that I'm _still_ not sure how they pulled off as well as they did - I can easily imagine 20% of that $100mm went into the Ribbon interface.
For those of us who hop between Visio, Word, Excel, Power Point - it's been a godsend. I don't know of a single users who puts more than 10 hours / week that (after a month or two of grousing over how the new was crappier than the old) - didn't consider it a major upgrade - particularly as for keyboard jockeys - the old keyboard shortcuts are still there.
The transition to the old crufty Menu Interface to the Ribbon interface, in my mind, was as big a difference for my productivity as the transition from the "Different-Menu's-per-application" of the Legacy era to the "Standard-Menu's-per-app" of the Macintosh era.
For those of us who hop between Visio, Word, Excel, Power Point - it's been a godsend. I don't know of a single users who puts more than 10 hours / week that (after a month or two of grousing over how the new was crappier than the old) - didn't consider it a major upgrade - particularly as for keyboard jockeys - the old keyboard shortcuts are still there.
The transition to the old crufty Menu Interface to the Ribbon interface, in my mind, was as big a difference for my productivity as the transition from the "Different-Menu's-per-application" of the Legacy era to the "Standard-Menu's-per-app" of the Macintosh era.