which one do you use? i personally prefer Latex. because it can free you from the worries of the format so that you can focus on the content. produce beautiful equations.

Er, I thought latex was something very very different... and much more fun than a PhD write up.

I'm guessing it is quite rare to use latex. I used Open office as I knew how to use it and feel comfortable writing in it. There were problems as my bibliography was in endnote and had to convert, and the bibliography is not ideal in open office at the moment. It did mean I could mark text with style sheets as I went along and edit fonts later.
I know someone who did use latex.

I'm with you sleepyhead!

I use Word.
I even made avideo tutorial and a template
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soQTECGcY9M

I use Word too.

I'm intrested to know if this tutorial helped you, (reminder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soQTECGcY9M )
I spent a great deal of time when I was starting to write my thesis using Word and I know that if I had this tutorial it would've literally save me days. What do you say?

I now use LaTeX after Word kept threatening to die during my master's dissertation and have recently completed my upgrade report in LaTeX. Once I'd got the hang of the commands it was so much easier to put the document together than in Word.

That's what I've heard but it's too late for me to start using it as I did mine on Word! It's quite a pain as the formatting changes a lot especially when you try to piece the individual chapters together at the end!!!!!

I'm currently 9 months in to my PhD proper (1+3), and I'm thinking of a switch from Word to Latex. The only things that are holding me back are reference manager/referencing, and worrying about doing something wrong which can't easily be rectified later.