I am looking to get a program that does something similar to the Latex except for typing papers and lab reports. I have read of a program called Abacus and was wondering if anyone used it and if so how did it work. Or does anyone use a similar program.

The LaTeX you see used here on this forum (and others) is but a small part of what LaTeX can do. Many, if not most, scientific journals are written in LaTeX, and LaTeX is the preferred mode of submission for these journals. Here is a very nice primer on using LaTeX: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/ltxprimer-1.0.pdf. To give an example of what LaTeX can do, the primer I referenced was written in LaTeX.

I use LyX which is an implementation of TeX which is an implementation of LaTeX...

 

LyX is nice and simple and you can do everything complicated by clicking buttons if you want.