A new report from French-based Pfeiffer Consulting found that XP has a better, more effective interface than Vista. My question is this: Who spiked their Beaujolais?

According to the IT Enquirer, the report measures what Pfeiffer calls Windows Vista User Interface Friction (UIF), which “describes and quantifies the perceived differences in efficiency and user experience” in operating systems.”

Specifically, UIF “defines the fluidity and productivity that can be observed when performing the same operation on different computer systems, programs or devices.”

Pfeiffer claims to have run a variety of tests which show that Vista is less “fluid” than XP, and makes people less productive. For example, it claims that for “Menu Latency the slight lag that Windows imposes when displaying menus and submenus,” Vista is 20% worse than XP, and in “Desktop Operations (such as opening folders, deleting elements, etc)” Vista is 16% worse than XP.

There’s no information about how these results were measured, for example, on which hardware they were performed. That could make a tremendous different in the numbers.

But the numbers are beside the point; the report completely misses the mark. An operating system’s usefulness can’t be measured by how quickly a menu displays. It needs to be measured by the features, and real-world use. And here, Vista wins hands-down over XP. The new, lightning-fast, comprehensive search, integrated throughout Vista, by itself makes Vista more useful than XP. So do other new features such as better networking, the Sync Center, more mobility features, and plenty more as well. It’s also just plain fun to use.

No one should take this report seriously. It’s like gauging the quality of a piece of architecture by measuring door widths, or the quality of a work of fiction by the average word length.

After all, can you really accept the judgment of the French — remember, their favorite American comedian is Jerry Lewis.