Colour to B&W Digital Photos

I know there are lots of sites with plugins that will convert colour photos to B&W, but I would like some views on which plugins people are finding most useful in this area. Particularly with respect to improving contrast and giving the photo visual snap.

I am interested only in colour to B&W. I don't want to produce ripples or crackles or mosaics or have a million ways of modifying the colours. However, I do want to go beyond simple desaturation of the image and that might involve selective adjustment of colour channnels.

Also at this stage I want freeware.
thanks, Erik.

No plugins necessary EJ, just set the light contone to white and you'll get a b/w photo.
You can then adjust the curves using the PhotoTool's 'Levels' dialog (similar to a histogram) and allows adjustment of the separate channels.