You cite Office 2000 as an example of bad UI but honestly it's far easier to find stuff in menus if you're not sure where it is the having to hunt through the Ribbon bar for an icon that looks vaguely right to what you want. And sometimes the Ribbon bar just hides stuff completely if the Window isn't wide enough.
The thing with menu driven interfaces is while they're ugly, they do make functions discoverable. You don't need to remember what icon you want nor where it is, you just need to remember it is in the menu.
From a personal perspective, I still find myself hunting for common functions in Office even after years of using the Ribbon bar. I've found that to be the single handed biggest productivity killer to Office
The thing with menu driven interfaces is while they're ugly, they do make functions discoverable. You don't need to remember what icon you want nor where it is, you just need to remember it is in the menu.
From a personal perspective, I still find myself hunting for common functions in Office even after years of using the Ribbon bar. I've found that to be the single handed biggest productivity killer to Office