I think LaTeX simply doesn't live up to its promise. Yes, its a big improvement over Word, but I still find myself manually adding \newpages, rewriting paragraphs and shuffling text around because figures are placed in completely awkward places or you have pages with just one line of text and a sea of white.
That is in addition to the horrors you unleash once something stops working and you need to dig deeper. dvi2pdf..
There are about 5 parameters that adjust latex's pickiness when doing page layout with figures. Things like proportion of the page taken up by a figure. Tweak these and these problems should mostly go away. You may still need to move a figure ahead of a block of ordinary text (only do it at the final edit!) but you won't be tearing your hair out.
That is in addition to the horrors you unleash once something stops working and you need to dig deeper. dvi2pdf..