LaTeX is not latex as in the stuff made into gloves. It is pronouced like "Lay-Tec". It is a "programming" mark-up language used for type setting and document formatting. The Official LaTeX cite has a much better explanation than I can give you. I find it refreshing and nice to use. It does have a bit of a steep learning curve so this may not be for you. If, however, you want complete control over your document instead of having to fight to get the page numbers just right or the figures to stay in the same place all the time, or for whatever other reason LaTeX is for you.
You can use any text editor and compile it separately. There are many programs that combine that functionality. I like two programs that are specifically LaTeX editors. One being LEd which is for windows and the other being Kile which is open source and runs on linux. For a program running in the MS operating system, LEd is actually very well done. Another editor, but it attempts to be a wysiwyg ("what you see is what you get") editor is Lyx. I don't like the feel of it but I know many who like it. I suggest you try several, there are many more than those three, and use which suits you best.
I also suggest using a bibliography editor. I happen to not like BibTex but there are many available. There used to be one called Bibedit. I am not sure where it went but it has disappeared. Bibliography editors help you sort, enter and keep track of papers, articles, etc that you wish to cite in your paper.
I have tried this with three separate Tex packages. I have used the MikTex package for MSWindows (several version of that OS). I also have used both the teTex and Texlive packages in linux. All work fine, try one and see if it works for you.
Helpful Links
MSU Thesis LaTeX Style Guide
UPDATED 25-Sep-2008 If you are writing a thesis or dissertation at Montana State University you need to follow certain guidelines and formats for your works to be accepted by the Division of Graduate Education (aka D.G.E.). I have borrowed from other people's work and created my own open source style guide for people at MSU to use. Using this example ETD as a guide means you do not need to worry about formatting your dissertation. That is a zipped file that contains an example so you can easily follow along. It is really what I have done with my dissertation so far. You should unzip it and read the comments in the MSUStyle.cls file and also read the READme.txt file. They will help you understand what is going on. You simply pump in your text, compile and done! Really it is almost that easy. You don't have to worry about the table of contents, references, figure or equation numbers, etc. For your ease of use the style guide is zipped up with an example figures, tables, citations and how to reference those in the paper. Please email me if you use the stlye guide. I just want to track how many are using it and be able to better help you if you have troubles. Also, email me if you have questions regarding the style guide. My email is in the READme.txt file, in case you didn't notice yet. I have also decided to post the raw MSUstyle.cls file, the main tex file, the bibliography style file (updated 21Aug2008 to replace the original author's Polish notations with english) I use and the READme file all for those that may only want to download 75KB instead of 5MB. I also posted the dissertation format output so you can see what it looks like. Inside the zipped example is a pdf output of what the thesis output looks like. There is a lot of good LaTeX stuff in the zipped example and you may miss out on good hints if you only download the style guide. Good Luck!
Recently, DGE has consented to posting a few style guides, including mine which is above, for your help they are found here. Choose one that works for you.
USU Thesis LaTeX Style Guide
If you happen to be at USU and looking for a style guide...I got this one from Alan McInnes and used it for my Master's thesis. This is the way I got it from Alan in 2004. I had to make minor changes to it to get it to work in a certain nameless, non-opensource operating system. It is a lot more complex than the one I made for MSU, but if it works don't complain.
Curriculum Vitae
I recently changed my curriuculm vitae to a LaTeX file. This is quite satisfying and looks rather sharp. In large, the style and file came from
Andrew McNabb. I had searched high and low for a style I liked better than my own. I found his style guide and modified it for my own uses. This is the tex file and the pdf file. I also used a bib file and a bibliography style file to compile my CV using pdflatex. For the bib style file I used a urlbst perl script to enable url linking and doi output from the LaTeX standard bibliography style plunsrt.bst file.