Charles, I certainly understand your point regarding efficiency. For existing users who already know the various Word 97-2003 shortcuts, the ribbon bar is a completely new interface. You've obviously given it a fair chance over 4 months. It's well known that prior learning actually interferes with new learning, and the ribbon bar is a radical departure. From your description, you sound like a power user.

However, for those users who were not even using 10% of Word's features due to its prior complexity and/or lack of sufficient training (and there are a LOT of people in that category), I think the new ribbon bar represents an improvement on overall usability, especially for those who are visual learners. I've also had to look around in the various ribbon tabs to find old features. The same is true of Vista in general.

However, I like being able to see most of the features in a glance rather than hunting through lots of text menus. I believe that with any new interface, regardless of the usability improvements, users should receive proper training to take best advantage of them and for the organization to realize a more effective ROI on their technology upgrade investment.

I take it that you used VBA to program various macros to automate a good portion of your daily work. Kudos, as that's very efficient. I think you'll agree that a new menuing or ribbon bar could not supplant that, so it's a little bit of comparing apples and oranges. However, your point is well taken in terms of trying to apply prior experience to the new interface. It could present new barriers for existing users.

But don't forget, you probably acquired your prior Word efficiencies over a number of years learning and using the prior interface. When many WordPerfect users switched over to Word 97-2003, I heard many of the same comments as yours. I guess it's all relative.

I can not agree with your assessment of Office 2007. I used the beta version for 4 months and never got use to the Ribbon. I have been using Office since it first came out. What you do in 2, 3or even 4 buttons, I can do in 1. For me it was too steep a learning curve and at this point in time not worth taking. This is too bad because I wanted to use the improved XML features. I am a legal assistant and have learned to use the VBA Programming features to improve my productivity considerably. I am hoping that in the next version they will give us a choice on using the Ribbon or the old menu and icon system.