I’ve been using the various windows live alphas and betas for a while now and ,even though I still feel they’ve got it terribly wrong (launching, branding amongst some of the things), I like the products.

Anyway, I tried out Windows Live Writer a few months back and I was unimpressed by it, however, I am more than happy to take it all back. Windows Live Writer is brilliant!

You load it up and the first thing it does is ask for your blog settings. You type in your url (even if you’re hosting it yourself), username and password and it goes away and figures out how to interface with the blog and it saves the settings.

You can add a category, slug, change author, trackbacks, insert tables, maps, tags, hyperlinks, formatting, publish date and more.  And all this while viewing it as a web layout based on your own blog design.

In fact, this post was made using Live Writer. I didn’t open my browser once. I’m impressed. It’s one thing to make an application that can do all that, but the simplicity is the key. 

A big pat on the back to the Live Writer team.