Emotionally Speaking

You need offline blogging tools if you badly miss the following aspects with your WordPress or BlogSpot in-built editor: write your post without any internet connection, save a local draft on your machine, speed, easy uploading and editing of pictures, cross post to multiple blogs, MS Word-esque ease etc. If you are not using an offline blog tool/editor/software, then you are missing a lot in life and blogging. Off line blogging, simply put, is doing it offline and then needing the connection for some seconds to publish it online on your blog.

Offline blogging is much easier and highly recommended. Windows Live Writer is without doubt the best offline blogging software tool. Here are some quick reasons on why you should must use it and what you are losing if you are not. These points (only indicative and not exhaustive) are solely based on my experience but I have yet to find a person who is not happy with the offline blogging tool called the Windows Live Writer.

1. Windows Live Writer is easy to install and use. There are many offline blogging softwares/clients available free of cost but none so versatile as the WLW. Setting up your blogs with Windows Live Writer is very easy and publishing posts is very simple. It downloads your theme, categories etc. and you can preview the posts before publishing.
2. Writing posts with WLW is quite enjoyable and easy. WordPress editor is often slow and hangs for a moment or two when you are giving the tags or while it is inserting the slug on its own. Windows Live Writer is a cut above the rest!
3. You can install plugins, extra smileys etc. and enhance the functioning of the offline blogging tool. You can use a number of fonts, install a plugin like XPollinate to cross post (publish the same post on more than one blog) or a text template plugin to regularly insert some html in your posts etc. There is also a plugin for WordPress tags. You also have options for tables, maps, videos etc. I use WLW to make tables on my blogs.
4. The greatest benefit of offline blogging and Windows Live Writer is with uploading pictures. You can install pics with the click of a button and it is instant unlike your WordPress editor which takes a lot of time. You can resize the pic, put a watermark, change the contrast etc. and the best thing is that you can save these setting as the default option. I have made many one-time pictorial documentation blogs in 3-4 hours such as the JNU Holi blog or the Delhi zoo blog. If I had used the WordPress editor it would have taken 2-3 days!
5. With offline blogging and WLW you can post immediately or save a draft on your local machine or post draft to blog and edit it there.
6. You can carry your offline blogging tool editor in a flash drive [pen drive]! Read here how to make your windows live writer a portable USB application.
7. If you use Windows Live Writer, it is impossible not to be addicted by it. You will find that you just can’t blog without it! I have never used the WordPress editor from the moment I am with the Windows Live Writer. And the list of functions  here is not comprehensive; you can do much more with Windows Live Writer and offline blogging. Offline Blogging and Windows Live Writer is a must have for blogging enthusiasts.

Click here to download Windows Live Writer 2009.