Yes, Latex is a little difficult to read. However, if you do decide to use it, use a colour coded text editor to write the source.
I use EmEditor (have a look at
www.download.com for it), and find it to be excellent.
Miktex comes with a PDF convertor, which will convert the source (the .tex file) to a PDF file. The command is "pdflatex
filename". It's true: DVI files don't look nice on a monitor and are not as widely used as PDF, as the previous post mentions. This convertor obviously avoids the problem!!
It is tricky to use to begin with, but I would not use Word (and the like) for a large scale project personally. Download it, fiddle about with it, if you like it use it, if you don't, don't!!!
HTML is a viable alternative, extremely portable, but doesn't look as professional as TEX.
Just a few ideas...
