I work in IT and I remember when they took away my Office 2003 way back when. I too did’t like the ribbon but you know, you had to adjust. They changed many of the keystroke shortcuts that had become almost muscle reflexes for me.
So just this year, I’ve been consulting at a client who still has an XP box with Excel 2003. Oh boy, does it cause a hugely partial vacuum. Just take a peek at the differences in conditional formatting and you’ll see an example of what I mean.
And as for Outlook? Newer versions blow the 2003 version away by light years. I am stuck with Outlook 2003 for a couple more months as well at this client.
I am okay with 2010 Outlook. I am one of those people who never discards an email, so that is great for me due to the better handling of large PST files in the newer version.
It is Excel I have the major issue with. Even the guts...now, you cannot calculate a median value in a pivot table! Why the H E double hockey sticks did they have to change something like THAT?