A few days ago, I saw the leaked screenshots from Windows 7. Microsoft Paint and Wordpad now “feature” the ribbon bar, just as Office ‘07 does. It finally occurred to me: Microsoft isn’t stupid. It’s not like they didn’t recognize that the switch to the ribbon in Office ‘07 (with no alternative interface) would drive users to OpenOffice. They are simply investing in their future user base. They want to lock users into the new system.