Bad Microsoft web design

I like Microsoft hardware. They make really good mice, and in the past made really good keyboards. However, the Microsoft hardware website has the worst country selection I've ever encountered.

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When you go to http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/ it comes up with a page asking you to select your country. Many websites do this when the products differ from region to region. Putting aside the issue of forcing this choice at all, let's focus on the interface they provide to make the choice. It's awful.

1. All this room on the page to put links, but instead they put the options in a drop-down selector. A list of links would be easy to scan and a simple click would take me on my way. Instead I have to click to open the list, find my country (maybe scroll), click it, then click the "Go" button.
2. The list isn't sorted in any way. How about at least alphabetical? How about at least keeping different language sites for the same country together?
3. Most of the prime real estate on the page is occupied by a map of the world. You can't click on your country, it's only purpose seems to be to highlight the continent of your selected country. Useless, especially since the countries each have their own site (except Canada).

My quick re-design: