camera raw screwing things up?

[hue-e]

Ok, so I recently upgraded to OSX 10.6 (snow leopard), which for some reason makes the Nikon ViewNX crash all the time (already researched it, it's a problem they're supposed to patch at some point). So I'm using Adobe Bridge to sort photos and narrow down what I want to process.

Both ViewNX and Bridge actually displays my RAW photos pretty close to what I shot them at, or hell, even what I'd convert them as... but for some reason, Camera RAW for photoshop decides it's going to make it look as terrible as possible like I need practice fixing color balance, contrast, etc.

Has anyone else had this problem? I really just wanted the shot I was previewing in Bridge, not this terrible hunk of sh*t camera raw gives me before I fix it.

My main question is... does anyone have any problems like this using Lightroom? I'm trying to decide if not having this problem would justify me buying it.