[Larry]

Also, it's incredible that while in previous versions of Word, a user could
easily remove, say, a button from a menu that he didn't need, or remove a
whole menu from the menu bar that he didn't need, or add new buttons to
existing menus, or add his own menus, with Word 2007 (which is supposedly
more user friendly!), the most highly specialized tasks, for example
scholarly writing, which very few users would use, are placed in their own
tab in the Ribbon and cannot be removed, unless the user pays $30 for this
third-party add-in that Daiya mentions.

The amazing thing about Word since I first got it in 1998 was that Word, as
it came out of the box, was a mess, but that Word had the most fantastic
customization capabilities which enabled the user to turn Word into an
environment he could work with. Now MS has changed that basic philososophy
and forces an unwanted uniformity on the user.

For example, it enables you to "minimize" the Ribbon and just access the
Ribbon commands with keyboard combinations. But the catch is that when you
use these keyboard combinations with the Ribbon minimized, the entire Ribbon
with all its paraphenalia flashes into view for a second then disappears
again. This is just weird. Instead of, as with previous versions,
displaying a simple unobtrusive drop down menu for a second when accessing a
command on that menu, you have to display the entire Ribbon. The total
effect is an incredibly "over-busy" user interface that you're trapped in.