Like I said it might just be the configuration my school uses but I hate it it drives me nuts. No It isn't office we have that set up right, it is mostly the Adobe stuff and the MAC specific stuff.
Finder is not even close to Explorer, finder is a tiny little pop up Explorer works within the Windows environment, again unless that is just how the school has it set up if that is the case then you are right they are similar but I for one prefer my environment to be uniform, everything opens in a full sized window, that is why I like Windows, on the Mac, in my experience at least, everything is all over the place. I also really like the start menu and the task bar, I don't know I guess I have been using Windows forever so we must just differ due to our experiences I just personally don't get it, thankfully most people tend to side with me as Windows is still the most popular OS in the world, which I maintain is because it is the best but to each their own I guess...
On a side note for what its worth I really do like Ubuntu so it isn't Windows or nothing for me.