Back to Microsoft Word

In the end, after a few weeks on Windows Live Writer, I decided to go back to use MS Word 2010. The main reasons were:

1. Images. I do a lot of screenshots in my articles, usually to describe a software or a process, e.g. SQL Server BI, etc. With WLW every time I update the article, it reload all the images as another name. I recall one of the comments on the WLW blog was about that. Having experience it myself, I felt I had to correct it because of space reason (and also untidy), e.g. delete all the copies of the images from WordPress, leaving just 1 copy. This is very time consuming. Using Word 2010 Blog template, same problem. So I had to revert to a normal Word template (not the blog one). This way, only 1 copy of each image because I essentially load the images one by one myself into WordPress. I only use the MS Word for writing the article and inserting images, but then copy paste the text into WordPress manually, and upload the images manually. But, if the article doesn’t contain any images, like this one, I use the Blog template feature of MS Word, simplifying the uploading process tremendeously.
2. Features. There are so many features in Word that I missed. Shortcuts, spelling/proofing, font, and its ease of use. I have been using Word since in 1990. It was DOS based, MSWord 5. I was a WP user before, and Chi Writer, but MS Word was better so I converted. I have been with Word only since 1990 and I’m very familiar all the shortcuts etc. WLW on the other hand is quite limited I found, in terms of features
3. Management. I maintain a copy of all my articles on my laptop, backed up to USB disk (every week) and external HD (every 3 months). I found it is easier to manage the documents using Word. Using WLW it always goes to MyWeblogPosts under My Document, and I had to move them manually to by DWBI Blog folder. I didn’t have the freedom to create the documents/files on the location that I wanted.

Vincent, 4/6/11.