Is it time to change GIMP for some other photo editing Software?

I have been using GIMP for a long time. Since I have DSLR camera
(Canon Digital Rebel XT/EOS 350D) and I have been shooting to RAW format time to time I'm seriously thinking about more sophisticated picture editing software. The reason? Simple, 16bit support!
The only freeware alternative I found is CinePaint (AKA FilmGIMP) but I wasn't able to install it correctly and run yet. The other alternative I'm thinking about is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom . I tested the Beta version some time ago. It's very powerful tool. Only I didn't like was the speed and RAM memory consumption. If I choose the LightRoom I definitely need to upgrade my memory (I have to do that anyway...).
Finally I must say that GIMP is a great tool and I would use it probably forever if there is a 16bit support.