Picasa from Google is a very good place to start, it is very freindly and supports a large range of file formats and is free!.

If you are looking for something a little more 'industrial strength' then take a look at Adobe Lightrom..

Clwyd - Pixcellence Wedding Photographer London.

Http://www.pixcellence.co.uk/http://www.pixcellenceweddings.comhttp://www.pixcellenceweddings.blogspot.com..

Also available free is Silkypix which has a good collection of tools for editing RAW files and exporting than as TIFFS. See.

Http://www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/.

If you have PS elements 5, that supports RAW files too..

Best wishesMike..

Lightroom is going to become an industry standard, probably, and i've actually been favorably impressed with it [and i'm an adobe-hater]. it'll convert and then some. it's print dialogue is particularly nice..

Lightzone does much more than just convert, and is an excellent editing package as well, as long as you don't want to do compositing tasks. it is far more straightforward than any other editors i've encountered, and so is far easier to useyet has not been crippled as have other 'easy-to-use' 'solutions'. but the conversions here are very bare bonesthe great news about that is that you can customize HOW it converts very easily and apply that template [and you can make multiple templates for different types of conversions, portrait, landscape, etc] as you see fit. great, great program..

There are many other converters[like the late lamented RSPalthought RSE may still be available for free download] and it seems each has it's partisans, as some are more DAM oriented for professional users, and of course a range of prices, from free to $$$.

I'll keep RSP on my hard drive for a while, but these 2 are my picks now, especially lightzone...

For some processing then converting from RAW to TIFF I have not found Canon's DPP to be sluggish at all (2ghz AMD processor and 2 Gb RAM)..

Http://www.rawtherapee.com/You can try the free RAW converter at this website. I have not yet tried it.thezero..

Try UFRaw.

Http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/.

Or Rawtherapee.

Http://www.rawtherapee.com/.

Both are free and both work.............. Although Rawtherapee is a little clunky...