I want to like ecto for Windows, I really do. But it’s not the same experience on the PC as it is on the Mac. Maybe one day it will be.

I’ve read some good things about Blogjet, so I downloaded the demo and I’m giving it a try.

Good:

• Interface is clean and consistent. For Mac users, you can’t imagine how hard this is to find in a Windows application. Don’t take it for granted.
• Simple. Uncluttered. Once again, not typical for Windows. I’m considering recommending Blogjet to the folks who write for the C3 blogs.
• Built-in smilies.  Let’s see if this uploads correctly when I publish.
• Nice little touches, like an “Edit last post…” command.
• Nice rich text editor yet easy to make quick switches in code view.
• Good support wiki. 

Maybe not-so-good:

• Expensive. $39.95 is steep. Shows how bad Windows blog editors are that I’m even thinking about it.
• I like to upload my images to /images/yyyy/mm. You set the default image path when setting up the blog and I can’t seem to figure out how to change that on a post-by-post basis.
• Only one entry open at a time.
• No preview template (so you can see what the entry will look like using your site’s own stylesheet)
• No tagging.
• No Markdown/Textile formatting preview.
• If I have a URL copied in my clipboard, and I select the hyperlink button or hit control-K, I think Blogjet should paste the URL from my clipboard in the appropriate spot in the dialog.
• The spell checker needs work.

In the course of reading the Blogjet forum, I came across mention of post2blog, another Windows client still in beta. Before I consider spending $40 on Blogjet, I’m going to download post2blog and give it a try. That one is only $14.95.

Update: I had to pull this entry up in the Mac OS X version of ecto in order to correct the categories, pings and technorati tags. I tried Post2blog, and it was worse! More in the next entry which I’m typing from within the MT interface because Post2blog is that bad (to be fair, it’s still in beta). Why is it so difficult to make a decent weblog client for Windows? Is it just me? Did the Mac OS X version of ecto set the bar too high?

Tags: Windows blog editor, Post2blog, Blogjet