I agree. While I enjoy that it just makes everything look OK (since I don't care about most of the details), the best parts are the super easy macro definitions and being able to write equations (almost) as fast as I could by hand since it's all text -- I took notes for my physics and math classes in latex. Awesome packages like PGF/tikz, beamer(!) and listings are icing on the cake. Then again, the error messages are abysmal and placing tables is a huge chore.