Microsoft Windows Live Writer review

Windows Vista’s Mail, Calendar, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker are missing from Windows 7, but there’s no need to panic. They’re all available – new and improved – as a separate download.

Unlike the other parts of Microsoft's Windows Live Essentials pack, Writer is a brand-new application designed purely for offline blog posting. You could be forgiven for wondering what such an app would add, especially since most blog services’ online interfaces are so usable these days.

The most obvious, and biggest, advantage is that you don’t need to be online at all to write and prepare your blog post. You can simply pop in to Writer, add tags, pictures, links and movies while you’re between internet cafés – and once you’ve got yourself web access, all you need to do is hit Publish.

The most wonderful thing about Writer is that, once you’ve pointed it at your blog and supplied a username and password, it analyses the website, downloads graphics and other page elements, and lets you preview your blog offline too, so you can be sure the layout is just right. It works brilliantly – a worthy addition to the Windows toolkit.

Author: PC Pro