This is only half of it...
Great story, well reported. But I have to add something: Three years ago, I upgraded to Office 2007. I hated it then, I still hate the ribbon now, although I use it every day.
But here's the key thing: I'm in a service business. I work with lots of Fortune 500 companies. Where I used to be able to send MS word or PPT files back and forth, and always be assured that the person at the other end could open them, this has never been the case with Office 2007.
Three years later, in 2010, I still can't send docx docs with any reasonable degree of assurance that there won't be a problem. The corporate world has not adopted the office 2007 format. Everyone I know who uses Office 2007 ends up saving Docs in the .doc format, (and/or just converts everything to PDF.)
Microsoft hasn't addressed this problem at all. They can claim whatever they like, but the docx format still hasn't caught on -- and it's a problem that no one wants to deal with, or talk about.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
