MV, the number of people that graph 256 data-points out of the total Excel user base is pretty low.
Similarly the number of people that write books in Word is pretty low*.
For bog standard stuff that everyday Office users use they haven't really changed that much.
However I concede that they now have a help pop-up that tells you you are writing a letter, they allow you to add 'Sum' into every formula, they switch spelling to US English as often as they can regardless of your International settings on the machine, they allow you to format a text document with multiple Tab stops amongst other very bright things.
Watching a non-techy person using Word or Excel you'll see that use of these Office applications has actually been dumbed down by additions to the applications over the last 20 years or so. They do extraordinary things with the documents!
*(Which is lucky, since we closed most of the asylums)
rae - the poster "Eat Shit, 10 billion flies can't be wrong" comes to mind. Just because the CIO likes ActiveX doesn't mean it is any good.