Dan, just ignore all the hardcorders here. It's simply a matter of short sightedness. I myself admittedly is guilty of this as well - when I tell myself a crappy P&S camera can't produce anything of quality, that is, until I see some great work from a P&S camera.
The people here who are so adamant about their "traditional" B&W workflow are horribly short-sighted... Probably not having being exposed to enough quality work done both other methods, or simply because they don't know any better, beyond the stuff they do know about.