The best possible way to find something out is to have a go at it.
You can read all of this back and forth stuff, but it still won't show you a thing. In fact, it can seem overwhelming and difficult to some.

Picasa does a good job on conversions, granted you know the tools, and use the sliders instead of the "auto" functions. Raw shooter essentials 2006 seems to work well too, but runs slower on my machine.

As for the noise thing, that's my opinion, just going by what is on the print/screen.