Chris sorry I missed this, haven't been checking my older email during the week.
I currently mostly bypass the RAW converters and do all my development (contrast/exposure/dodge/burn) from inside Photoshop. I can never use just one development (ie one single contrast/brightness/exposure/tonecurve setting) which is applied to the entire photo, instead I need to use a tradition darkroom development like method and be able to dodge and burn, something which you simply cannot do in any RAW converter I know of.
However if you don't feel the desire to dodge and burn, and want just some simple settings then Lightroom is probably awesome for you. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not knocking having a reduced feature set, in fact some times it can be liberating because you can do lots of stuff fast and easy. Exactly the reason why my wife and I just purchased a JPEG only mini-point and shoot ... the work involved in developing RAW files of family snapshots and personal (non-business) photos just stopped being worth it to us..
For those interested in knowing more about Lightroom, check out these pages on the luminous-landscape.com,
http://www.google.com/custom?sitesearch=luminous-landscape.com&cof=GIMP%3Aff9900%3BT%3Acccccc%3BLW%3A469%3BALC%3A 993300%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fluminous-landscape.com%2Fimages%2FLL-logo.jpg%3BGFNT%3Affcc00%3BLC%3Acc0000%3BLH%3A81%3 BBGC%3A000000%3BAH%3Acenter%3BVLC%3Acc9900%3BGL%3A 2%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fluminous-landscape.com%3BGALT%3A006600%3BAWFID%3A35f6ab491f b2b550%3B&domains=luminous-landscape.com&q=lightroom&searchbutton.x=0&searchbutton.y=0