Oh! Wait! They have to learn a new Visual Studio every couple years. And they had to learn VB.Net (or C#, or managed C++). Most information workers are not dev

Oh! Wait! They have to learn a new Visual Studio every couple years. And they had to learn VB.Net (or C#, or managed C++). Most information workers are not developers and have never heard of the above technology. Keep in mind that developers are more receptive to change than most computer workers, which is part of the reason MSFT evolves dev technology more rapidly. They already do relearn lots of stuff. Switching to the new version of Windows/Office is not the same as switching to Linux/OpenOffice. To keep things in perspective, the switch to the Ribbon was the biggest change to Office in many releases. Most releases (e.g. Office 2010) require little relearning. And if you have a developer who is not willing to learn, fire him. Long term productivity hit meaning these workers cannot learn new things? It isn't black and white like that. This isn't about not being willing to learn or not being able to learn new things. Many computer workers -- lawyers, managers, schoolteachers, administrative assistants, my parents -- hate having to learn new technology. They'll learn eventually, but it might be slow and costly, and might not result in any productivity boost in the end. Come on...How many people within Microsoft really stress Words feature-set? 1%? The average "information worker" would be perfectly fine with WordStar and Visicalc. It's not about feature set. It's about familiarity, muscle memory, ease of use, efficiency, stability, performance, interoperability, accessibility, backwards compatibility, ubiquity (Office is installed on most PCs), documentation, supportability, and visual polish. Alternate response: why are so few organizations switching to WordStar & Visicalc?