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"On the other hand, the dog was only displayed if you elected to search for something."

If I want to search for something, I don't need an animated dog to get in the way of showing me the search form. Just show me the search form so I can get on with it. And when I tell the intrusive and unnecessary animation to go away, no, I don't need to waste another couple of seconds to watch it stroll away.

And Microsoft responded to complaints? Only after YEARS of constant and angry complaints over several versions. And none of it showed up in their user testing before Clippy was deployed? Seriously? Any way you measure it, it was a big failure to judge user's reaction beforehand or for years after the release.

I could tolerate that kind of mistake if it is relatively easy to make the dog or other stupid default embellishments *permanently* go away -- thus the "classic" modes in Windows XP. Thank goodness. And that's where the ribbon in the new version of Office really, really sucks. There is no built-in "classic" mode. You're stuck with it (or paying for third-party plugins). Not including a "classic" option is dumb. Worse, while some people like the ribbon, the feedback has been awful on average. Give users a choice, and may the best interface win.

Yes, that ribbon sure has increased productivity amongst intermediate and advanced users...

http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm

If you haven't learned yet that Microsoft changes things just to change them, because they are Microsoft and they can, then you either aren't paying attention or you must be new here.

Take a look at the network settings in vista and 7 vs xp. please explain how that is a positive change. Why did "add/remove programs" become "programs and features"? All they did was rename it, when there was no need to do so. Why did printers and faxes get folded into hardware devices? Some changes that MS makes are positive, such as being able to pin applications to the taskbar, gestures, and location bars that have dropdown folder options. Other changes make no sense and feel like they're just throwing darts trying to look like they're doing something useful. And really, the best UI changes are the ones that you don't have to use if you don't want to (which all of the above fall under, and the ribbon does not).

Also, do not forget that this company has a branch specifically dedicated to selling training certifications on new versions of their software. If you change the UI, you can justify a new training certification.

semantic lesson aside, you've dreadfully abused the notion of standard deviation. You've just made the ridiculous case that if you took a 640x480 pixel pictures of someone a mile away, you could figure out the length of his nose, so long as you took that picture a million times.

You are confusing yourself with a false analogy. Digital photo enhancement is a very different problem with a different set of issues. I could talk about those, but I doubt if it would make sense to somebody who has yet to grasp the concept of standard error.

Seriously, get yourself a balance scale that has a measurement resolution of 1g, and tell me how many micrograms one of your eyelashes is. Take as much time as you want.

I'm a scientist. I do this sort of thing all the time. It absolutely works. But you don't have to take my word (and the word of every basic statistics text on the planet). You could prove it yourself. Just simulate it mathematically. Take a number whose value you know, add normally distributed random noise of whatever magnitude you like. Do this several thousand times. Then try averaging 10, 100, 1000 of these numbers. Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the averages. You will find that you can recover the original number to whatever precision you like. You could even do it in Excel (here's a website that tells you how to generate normally distributed random numbers in Excel).

However, I predict that you won't bother. After all, you still haven't taken the trouble to learn about standard error. I suspect that you are only interested in science and math to the extent that you can use (or more accurately, misuse) it to buttress your preconceived notions.

MS's ribbon will probably meets more than most because of vocal minorities and because the coupled it with a switch that temporarily eliminated some features.

It's not a vocal minority -- you haven't shown any data to support that assertion. See my other comment here. According to this survey, which is the only one I have seen about the new interface, the majority of advanced excel users hate the ribbon, and about 80% of them dislike it. The people who actually like this interface are the minority, not the other way around! Even for advanced users, the majority don't like the ribbon. You can argue that the ribbon was designed for people who aren't experts in excel, and those people are a majority of people who buy excel licenses, but you can't say that people who use excel the most often like the ribbon.

Whatever the source of the data that they used, the result is something that the majority of advanced excel users hate and about 80% dislike. For intermediate users, about 40% hate it and 60% dislike it. Basically, people who know how to use excel already can't stand this ribbon, so MS has just royally pissed off some of their best customers perhaps to the benefit of those who don't use it so often. I have seen more people migrate to linux on their laptops due to this single "feature" than anything else. The ribbon is an even more than the problems with vista, although it is more of a straw that broke the camel's back sort of thing.

I already dislike the new gui for firefox on the mac (why in the world does the back button need to be so big?), and use safari because of it, but on linux I use FF all the time. I guess I'm going to sit back and hope that midori is released soon, or use konqueror.

I'll agree that most people found it amusing or uninteresting but I think the poster I replied to was certainly reacting with an anti-MS slant.

No, it wasn't so much as anti-MS as bored with MS. Here's the essential point as I see it. Apple starts some stores, they're pretty successful, MS comes along, starts some stores and rather than try and innovate and develop their own new strategies for success, they're poaching Apple employees. It's just not innovative and there hasn't been a lot of innovative ideas at MS for some time.*

* Okay, I admit the ribbons are innovative, but considering that more than half the expert users of office hate them, I wouldn't call it successfull innovation.

Well it's a good thing that your incredulity doesn't override statistical evidence.

You want statistical evidence? Look here, from a survey of Excel users from May, 2009:

Month in and month out, the respondents have said that Excel's Ribbon has reduced their productivity by an average of about 20%. And users with a negative opinion of the Ribbon estimate that it's reduced their productivity by about 35%.

They found that 36% of advanced and 29% of intermediate users "hate or dislike" the ribbons, which vastly outweighs the people who "love or like" the ribbons at 20 and 24%, respectively.

How 'about them apples?