Windows Live Writer, Messenger and Mail Receive Updates

The blogging tool currently powering Fans of Tech just received a much needed update.  Now in beta 2, Windows Live Writer now sports some mighty features including inline spell-checking, enhanced table editing, the ability to add additional pages to your blog (sorry, for WordPress and TypePad only) as well as “automatic synchronization of local and online edits.”  The program also received a facelift which is not only similar to the beautiful Windows Live Mail but which also supports Vista’s Aero interface.  Read the entire list of enhancements and new features on the Windows Live Writer official blog. 

The other updates we mentioned, to Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger, don’t seem to be as quite as feature-rich but deserve a download regardless.  In fact, the updates to WLMessenger seem to mainly be cosmetic.  WLMail, on the other hand, offers a bit more including the ability to use the program without a Windows Live ID…meaning you can just use the fancy GUI and far-beyond-Outlook-Express functionality with any mail account you wish.  (Yes, you were able to view other POP accounts in WLMail in the previous version but you still had to have a Windows Live ID to sign-in to the application.)

As a side note, we’ve been using Windows Live Writer to add new content to our site for some time now.  While we sometimes do make use of the embedded editor for WordPress, we like the enhanced functionality and WYSIWYG editing that WLW offers.  Really, the only thing drawing us to a WLW competitor like RocketPost would be the ability to act as a standalone editor for portability.  Hopefully Windows Live Writer might fill this void someday but, for now, we’re very content with the updates we’ve been handed for this latest beta release.

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