In the six months I used Adobe Camera RAW shooting RAW files with my G1 and GF1, I didn't encounter anything like what is described - the images just looked anemic until you worked with them. I found that to be very bothersome. I like the image, out of the camera, to pop and give me a "wow" reaction. That way I can sort through them and pick out the good ones.
At the moment I have given up on shooting RAW because I can and have adjusted both of these cameras so that they give me what I want right out of the camera shooting JPEGs. Basically it involved using the "Cloudy" WB setting but moving it one notch toward blue and three notches toward magenta. I then use Film Mode "Dynamic", but cut back one notch on contrast and noise reduction and go up one notch on sharpenning and saturation. This gives me reliable predictable results in most all situations. Whatever the natual light is, that is what I get in the image. It is not neutralized out by changing the white balance for each situation. I keep these settings dialed in at all times, just as you would use your favorite film like Velvia or Ektachrome 100 in any situation.
I have also given up on Adobe RGB color space and have gone with sRGB. There are just as many colors, they are just spread over a somewhat narrower area. But being closer together may make their transition smoother from color to color. It also makes getting outside prints from Kodak or donig a book with Blurb way easier since sRGB is the color space the rest of the world uses. The colors are just as vibrant and wonderful with my Epson 4000 printer as they were before.
For the exposure, I shoot in Aperture Priority and with the live histogram there just adjust Exp. Compensation so the right side of the histogram just touches the right edge. In post processing I just make a few tweaks and I'm done (a little more sharpenning and perhaps a little more saturation) The G1 and GF1 are proving to shoot incredibly good JPGs when they are adjusted and seasoned to taste as above. Once so adjusted, you have little to fiddle with - just decide on the depth of field and get the exposure right. The rest is composition.
