Working with RAW

Hello

I'll start with the question itself: Could someone please tell me in a few steps what the process of working with RAW files is, that is what do you do with those files and what is the final product after editing, processing and so on.

A bit of explanation: I've never shot RAW before, but now that I got myself the E-M5 I think it would be a waste of potential at least not to try shooting RAW. So I did.

But, first of all, the Olympus Viewer is so painfully slow and I don't have Lightroom, or ACR, or anything like that (planning to get Lightroom), that it makes it even harder to work it out on your own.

Second, what do I do with it to make it more usable? Save as JPG or Tif? Tried both and why are those Tif files so terribly big (like 45 or 90mb). I heard/read that e.g. if you want send some quality photos to a customer then Tif is best. So, do you send them such huge files, or what?

Third, I shot the same scene for comparison, one in JPG, one in RAW, at ISO 6400, and I couldn't tell them apart. So is it that only after proper post processing you can see a real difference?

Hope it's all clear.

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Inkheart