I agree that the Ribbon is too big. It's certainly not something I want occupying my screen whenever I'm using explorer. Though, when I'm searching for options, I am fine with the Ribbon's presentation. It's fairly intuitive. At least as intuitive as the traditional drop down menu system, though that's probably not saying much.

Fortunately, I believe it can be minimized[1]. I just hope that the minimization carries over between sessions.

1: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/02/dont-p...