Moving from my Windows laptop to a Mac laptop means that I also need to find blogging software as I like blogging offline.

Unfortunately, it seems like no ones has designed one that can work as well as Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, the best blogging software out there.

I have tried a few different Mac options over the last week, read a ton of Top 10 lists (all are basically the same) and finally landed on MarsEdit. But even then it is with a resigned "if I have to" versus a happy transition. It amazes me that no blogging software has caught up to Live Writer, a 5 year old piece of software that hasn’t changed and is free. After a few minutes of work, my view:

• The ability to set a publishing date is very cumbersome. You have to do it through menus, versus Live Writer where it is on the main screen and a simple “click” and “pick”.
• The information and selection bar on Live Writer is very robust covering insertions, and changing as you put pictures into the WYSIWYG interface (crop, set default picture size etc.)
• Live Writer goes against your blog and pulls down you last 50 posts and gives you the option of choices to pull down all of your posts (if you want).
• Live Writer has a simple interface to allow for multiple blog support.

After only an hour of playing with MarsEdit I was left with the opinion that this product is a 5 at best and definitely not worth $40. I have no problem paying, but it has to be at least as good as Microsoft’s free product and it is not.So I installed Parallels, Windows 7 and Live Writer. Problem solved in a cumbersome manner and Windows lives on.