Just discovered Windows Live Writer via Shlok.  Previously, I’d experimented with BlogJet. 

WLW seems obviously better than BlogJet, from the very first load.  Very robust.  Upsetting, though, that Movable Type’s own tagging system cannot be accessed for saving tags with posts, especially since all three blogs on my installation use the MT tagging for categorization instead of the MT category feature (although it is used as well in the back-end.)  If you use tagging from some other service, WLW will have a simply customizable interface; e.g., besides Technorati, Flickr, etc., I could in theory customize the tagging to use my blog’s tag links for posting tag lists with blog posts — but unfortunately for me, the lists appear as add-ons at the end of post and are not added to the MT installation itself.

Very good feature of WLW:  automatic saving of drafts every X minutes, to prevent lost posts.

Most surprising feature?  WLW can detect the styling of your homepage and download CSS and HTML files to local copies for authentic preview rendering.  In the case of this blog, WLW succeeded perfectly in rendering exact previews of this post.

WLW also provides spell-check-as-you-write:  an improvement over BlogJet, surely.  Additionally, the WYSIWYG editing is much better.  As advertised on the home site of WLW, the blog post editor acts much like a word processor.  I’m particularly happy with the ability to add tables, especially also the numerous table editing features.

All in all, Windows Live Writer is the first serious, real competition for ScribeFire I’ve found.  I like ScribeFire’s integration with the Firefox architecture, however.

If Movable Type tagging could be accessed, I’d quite possibly switch to using WLW.  I’ll leave it on my system, just in case I am able to “get over it.”