Can we dispense with the "you hate it because you don't like change" argument yet? It's an easy way to write off other people's opinions and often it's not even close to being true.
It's particularly unlikely to be the reason when we're talking about something that was introduced about 20 years ago because it's not "change" anymore. Everyone is used to it now, and those that still dislike it don't dislike it because "it's new".
It's still new for some of these geeks that were already very experienced with computers around the time when Ribbon was introduced. They've just kept hating it since.
Computer geeks that hated this didn't realize how good it was because they were familiar with the previous generations and don't like change.
The Word/Office 2007 UX design is probably some of Microsoft's best design work ever.