LaTeX, really? Its like evil markdown.

I agree with the image thing, I'm taking courses that require a lot of screenshots to be put into documents and it's a bit annoying to do. Although, I get the feeling that it's difficult because the goal is to give you more control and consistent results, rather than to "be easy". I've had a ton of difficulty dealing with Microsoft office and images as well, but that is usually after the image is in there and I want to fine tune it. Also, I can grab an odt file from 15 years ago and it's laid out exactly the same as when I first made it, I can't open up a docx from two years ago without word messing up some part of the formatting.