Go Phillippousis!!
I have not ready anything else by this Joel guy, but he certainly seems awful foolish and self-righteous to me (as evidenced further by the fact he doesn't have comments). Just because people don't know how do do something, doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to do it. I've yet to encounter an Excel installation where I didn't add the "set print area" button to the toolbar, because people use it and its not there. Like kirk, I have my IE compressed down to one row, I have added new toolbars, I have added/removed buttons to accomodate my style. And you know what? After taking 2 minutes to explain to a non-power-user how to do so, they do similar things.
Also, his thing about the help dialog is false as well. Apparently he's never had a windows machine with a full drive, when the "minimize space" option is a very attractive one. I admit that these days that probably doesn't happen enough to warrant the option (not sure if it happens on XP) but up till a couple years ago that was a very valid (and very clear) dialog.