Is it better have a photo lab change your color photos to B&W? Do they have more depth than desaturating in photoshop? I have the same problem everyone else has with photoshop with the b&W coming out flat.
I'm going to read that Rockwell article in a sec so if I'm repeating anything that's in there forgive me.
I get B&W photos to pop in Photoshop somewhat easily. Desaturate or convert to Grayscale and then adjust the levels. That usually does it fairly well for me or if I want to REALLY push the effect I'll cut and paste the sky into it's own layer, then do Levels on each seperate layer.