How does Markdown compare to LaTex? I wrote in LaTex most of my career and only the past 10 years with Word. I generally liked LaTex, except I didn't like the fact that the doc I edited was not the doc distributed (dvi, pdf, ps). But its hard to beat the typesetting in LaTex.

Oddly, I find PowerPoint to be a great app. In fact, if I need to quickly draw something, I'm more likely to do it in PowerPoint than Illustrator or Design or anything. Why do standard drawing programs suck so much at doing quick sketches (at least for people like me who can't draw)?