Nice summary
When people--who are stuck on Windows--ask me about an Office package, for years I've been saying get an Office 97 package on eBay. The only exception is if you have to be compatible with an Access database, get Office 2000, or 2003 at the latest.
I've been teaching the Office '07 and '10 since the university switched. There are some ribbon items that were easy to find in the old menus and I still have to go to help to find them. (Looks really cool to have to do that in front of a class with the spreadsheet on the projector--though it does show how the help system works.) With your attitude (and mine!) I'd be afraid you'd run screaming from the room about fifteen minutes into using one of your engineering files on the ribbon.
And for my own use, I'm glad they haven't changed the keyboard shortcuts I use in '07 and '10.
