I use elements 3 just fine with my e-300 raw images. You probably just need to download the latest version of adobe camera raw:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=2936
When installed into elements 3 adobe camera raw does lose a few advanced features relative to what you'd see in photoshop cs2.
To get the most from RAW I think you want to stay in 16 bit (actually 12 under the hood I believe) mode for as long as possible (look in acr for a setting that controls this). RAW is really nice if you fouled up the white balance in-camera. Even with RAW, though, I still find myself using adobe's shadow/highlight feature (a lite version is in elements 3 under quick fix I believe) post-raw to pull detail from shadows.
also consider if you are on windows:
http://www.dpmagic.com/
(adds raw capabilities to your operating system viewer)
I find that Olympus Master does a nice job with colors but as a raw converter it's pretty sluggish (move a slider and wait 5-10 seconds). Also it doesn't seem to be able to do highlight recovery (like bringing back some clouds in a blown sky) whereas adobe camera raw can do some of that.
Raw Shooter Essentials is a free raw converter:
http://www.pixmantec.com/products/ra...ssentials.html
One nice thing about the e-300 is that you can shoot RAW plus high-quality jpeg (so you get the best of both worlds if you have a big CF card). With my d70 I can only shoot raw plus basic jpeg.
RAW takes you into another world but for the most part I'm still shooting high-quality JPEG (mainly because I find the workflow faster overall and I'm not very patient). Sometimes I shoot with exposure bracketing (set the exposure compensation to -0.3 and then dial up exposure bracketing so you get 0, -0.3 and -0.7) to make sure I get a properly exposed jpeg.