For the Love of LaTeX

I have been taking college classes at night in a hope of getting my Master's Degree sometime before I turn 50. The last one was "Networks and Data Communication". Actually it was really interesting. For the class I had to do a report on a chosen subject - I picked BitTorrent.

So I had picked my subject, now had to write the paper. With references. And footnotes.

I tried NeoOffice - very nice - but ungodly slow, though the pdf output was nicely hyperlinked.
I tried Mellel - also very nice - but I just didn't like it, and the pdf output couldn't be hyperlinked (for some bizarre reason this was REALLY important to me).
I tried Nisus Writer Express- again very nice - it just didn't give me the confidence for the footnotes, references and again - no pdf hyperlinked output.
I did not try MS Word, because well I just don't like it on principle.

What was I to do? For a prior class (Analysis of Algorithms) I had crash learned LaTeX, could this do what I want? It is used for thesis papers and reports so it might do the job.

And that is where the love affair blossomed... Did you know you can do bibliography's in LaTeX? Not only that, but properly formatted off from a page of references, with only the ones you use listed?

Did I mention footnotes?

How about consistent look to the document?

Hypertext pdf output?

Did I mention I am in love?

Oh, a plug for Google - their Document collaboration tool is AWESOME!!!

:)