I've never used MS Office for more than a few minutes at a time, but I always thought the ribbon was great design for discoverability. The part that seems like a fail to me is that it takes up a lot of vertical space and came out at a time when the screens many users had were getting shorter. A 14" 16:9 laptop needs every bit of vertical space optimized.

On a 9:16 or 10:16 portrait display, it would be perfect, but an element like that should probably be on the side for a newer laptop. A very quick google image search suggests that isn't a configuration option.