Not being a Canon user, I'm not familiar with Canon DPP, but I much prefer Capture 1 over Adobe Camera raw because of the degree of control it gives you. There is a much wider range of adjustment/controls available in C1 and the output is of much higher quality in terms of the way it renders colours and the quality of sharpening. Adobe Camera raw is a pretty basic package with what you can do with it in reality.
There's nothing to stop you downloading C1 v4 and using it on the 30 day trial you get anyway even if you haven't got a licence key at the moment. I know that quite recently, SanDisk Extreme III cards bought from
http://www.picstop.co.uk/ were still coming with the free licence.
Give it a go on the 30 day evaluation, see how you get on. The user interface is similar to Adobe Lightroom if you've used that.
Regards,
Duncan