[kmort]

Remember the old Windows time zone picker that let you click on the world map to select your zone?

Geopolitical sensitivity about precise borders forced Microsoft to switch off the region-highlighting feature.

(Info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...)

Also, the user may not always be picking their own country and it may be unreasonable to ask the average user to find, say, San Marino on a world map. While you could of course restrict the use of a map-style picker to only the users-own cases, it would be nice to have a somewhat standard picker for all occasions.