In the Rough - The Blog of Joel McDonald Jr.

I had read some good stuff over at Lifehacker about Windows Live Writer. I’ve avoided Windows Live like the plague, seeing it at mostly a bad attempt at consolidating web services into one badly designed package. After reading about Live Writer, I thought I’d give it a try.

Installation was smooth, and the program itself is fairly minimalist. Inserting the screen shot to the left was very easy. As a side note, I really wish I had a working function of automatically uploading a picture from my computer to my host for insertion into my blog. That particular WordPress function has been buggy.

Looking at the features ready at hand, I see that I can easily insert a table and a map. In addition to what comes with Live Writer, there are various plug-ins that I will likely be experimenting with, some of which may actually be a solution for the image upload problem I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

One thing I am enjoying is the strict spell check within Live Writer. Even though Firefox has a spell check built into the browser, I find it to be lax in catching many of my frequent errors.

I just noticed that Live Writer is using my current blog design to show me almost exactly how this post will appear on my blog. I must admit, that’s pretty cool.

Live Writer allows me to set categories and keywords, and even pulls in the categories I’ve set up for my blog. Unfortunately, the program does not pull up previous keywords. If anyone at Microsoft is listening, this is a feature I’d love to have!

Wendy Boswell at Lifehacker called Live Writer "slick" (emphases not added). I agree with her. While I’m not sure I’ll use Live Writer for all my blogging needs, I’m impressed how how connected the software is to my blog settings. I don’t think I’d be wrong in suggesting that Live Writer may be the best blogging software available.

Perhaps it was too much change, too fast, and too complex. The ideas behind Microsoft’s Windows Vista are right; however, it seems the Microsoft team hasn’t quite got it yet. I’m writing on my grandmother’s brand new HP laptop via Vista. For the last hour I have had Internet Explorer crash four times due to a problem with Adobe Flash, I’ve been unable to access course materials from the University of Phoenix, and it seems that downloading Mozilla Firefox is banned by not allowing users to access Mozilla.org. For the last point, I call foul play and submit that it is reason enough to view Microsoft as a company not to be trusted. In short, having been available for six months now, Windows Vista just doesn’t make the cut.I’ve spent a lot of time behind a computer…a lot of time. Vista gives me a headache when I try to keep track of its tiered access levels. The proposed fixes on the Adobe forum for the Flash problem seemed more complex than they needed to be. Shouldn’t users be able to install the latest version of a program and run it without having to take notes of what permissions the program has or if you’re opening the program as an administrator? It just doesn’t make much sense. If Microsoft is trying to copy the model of installation that Linux uses, they do a horrible job at it.

The best thing about Vista is the graphics. I love Flip 3D. However, it’s rare that I’ve ever used it beyond the personal delight I get from watching my open content rotate in a 3D space. I don’t think the trade off, graphics for memory footprint or GPU processing power, is worth it. Frankly, my year old XP laptop performs just as well or better than my grandmother’s new machine.

Perhaps after a few service packs, Vista will be ready for prime time. For now, I’m seriously thinking of looking toward Linux for my next OS upgrade; that is, if I don’t get a Mac.