Does blogger.com tend to have a lot of downtime? It seems that it has been down a lot today, which is disappointing since I was going to start a new blogspot blog. I think I will use Wordpress for my blog now, using a subdomain since I don't want to purchase a separate domain just for my blog.
Blogger.com does seem to go down fairly often, which was part of why I went to self-hosted WordPress. Blogger was also subject to a lot of slow periods where I'd spend a long time trying to simply upload an image. Like many other Google-run services, I think it's probably due to a lot of demand that's bogging them down a bit. I would guess it will get better over time. Most people (including myself) seem to like WordPress, so it's certainly worth a try. If you end up not liking it, you can always try Blogger.com later.
For a few bucks you get your own WP hosted blog and never have to worry about down time again. I personally would recommend people to look at other blogging CMS but I guess WP is the one with the biggest community.