LyX is a nearly WSYWIG front end for Latex. It constitutes a very credible open source alternative to my other preferred (commercial and quite expensive) Latex editor (Scientific Word).
I have been following LyX’s development for some years, without being fully convinced by its facilities. I consider that it now constitutes a very useful front-end to Latex: it is very stable and it fully interfaces with all the facilities characterizing Latex (typesetting mathematics, bibliography management, cross references, graphics, integrating results of statistical computations using R-Project - thanks to the Sweave interface, etc). It definitely offers today more functionality than Scientific Word (see below).
As a consequence, I do not have any reserve in advising you to test LyX, I think you will love it. Binary versions are available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).