As I wrote on here on TeX.SE, an interface allowing to use to online compilers would be great. So we could have a slim LyX installation while being able to use a maintained up-to-date TeX distribution instead of installing gigabytes locally on each computer. For example the open source LaTeX web API CLSI could be used.

Visio is not even capable of including PDF images. The same applies to MS Word. I assume Microsoft intentionally doesn't support this widely used standardized scalable quality format because of commercial reasons.

One should understand the tools for his or her work, more or less, depending on the expectation of the result. MS Office was made easier, but I wouldn't expect as good results and there's not as much control over the document. But home and office users often don't need it, so choosing the easier one is ok.

Those are good points, especially nag and l2tabu! There are also extensive lists, such as this one: Obsolete classes and packages with recommendations for replacement. Sadly, google honors old content and places this first, also naturally because of the backlinks grown over time. A LaTeX beginner should use a new book, a new tutorial, or a good actively maintained web site for getting further information. A good start can also be asking for recommendations in a LaTeX forum.

I agree. People may have a look at the TikZ example gallery to see what quality can be done using TeX based TikZ, and in a very efficient way.

So you are a young timer like me. :-) Nevertheless, TeX experienced, or interested in? I'm just curious if young people value TeX and LaTeX, today when many impatient people are bound to GUIs, and less interested in the source behind things.

Are you able to give reasons? A lot of publishers and journals accept LaTeX. Do you know any where ConTeXt is accepted? Are there ConTeXt templates and styles for any journal, such as the many LaTeX styles?

TeX does clever things especially regarding floats. If you want to understand the concept, have a look at the great post by the same author, who wrote that article, here: How to influence the position of float environments.

Embedding of PDF images is supported, so scalable. And most formats can be converted to PDF, there are even easy-to-use PDF file printer if a program doesn't directly support it. No need to convert to a bitmap format. Bitmaps are supported, but I would use that only if the image is already a bitmap. And you can embed it floating, for automatically optimized page breaking.