Nancy: you're right about sensitivity to movement. With the best sensors, figure about 4-5x focal length for the minimum hand-holdable speed to kee full rez. Worse of course if there's a mirror or focal plane shutter involved.
I joked the other day that the DP Merrills are basically minature tech-cameras: tripod based (for both composition and stability, base-ISO, shot with self timer. For optimum results, that's not too far from the truth. Used that way, the camera is potentially a fine-art tool. Used casually, it's just a really bad point and shoot.
Anfat: you should adjust highlight, shadows, white balance and sharpness in SPP. Sharpening is an interesting question. Michael has found (ro heard) that "0" in sharpening is actually not "nill". You have to do in a negative amount to get a truly unsharpened file. Personally, I find 0 to -4 are about right. That still might add some capture sharpening, but I don't object to that. I just sharpen less in LR4 -- which you would do anyway since these files are so sharp to begin with.