Hi Harvey welcome to the club 
I got my printer several weeks ago, so maybe it will be helpful to summarize my first findings.
None of this is groundbreaking to veteren users or forum trollers here, but a little 101 never hurts- and I found these tips to be even more important for if you move to Repetier and Slic3r:
Preparing for a print:
1) Home everything- eg. raise the bed fully, with the extruder in the far-right corner where it is not overlaying the bed. This way it doesn't have to home when everything is set to print, and its easy to reach underneath with a pair of tweezers to remove any drooling plastic right before you hit print.
1a - Slic3r only?) If you are using Slic3r and it's generating this command, remove it (or put a semicolon in front to disable it):
M109 S190 ; wait for temperature to be reached
This way when you hit print, it starts IMMEDIATELY. I had problems with it trying to wait longer, during the meantime plastic is drooling out the tip, and it's unsafe to try and remove it because you have no idea when the tip will take-off.
2) Turn your heated bed on about 15-20 min in advance. If the target temperature is 90 degrees, give it long enough to get to ~85 minimum.. It's most important for the first layer, so you won't be easily forgiven if you skimp on this!
3) Turn your extruder heat ONLY when the bed is nearly at the target temperature- since it heats up in only a couple minutes. Clogs could result if plastic is left cooking in the tip without being extruded for long periods of time. As soon as the extruder reaches temp (I use 190), continue with step 4
4) Extrude a few mm of plastic (I do 6mm) and remove it with tweezers. This way there is fresh plastic, the tip temp is stabilized, and the tip is clean.
5) Start the print
Shutting down a completed print:
1) Turn off bed and extruder. Turn off motors as well, since stepper motors consume power even when they are not moving.
2) Wait a minute (or watch till the tip temperature just starts to fall), then extrude a few mm of plastic (I do 6mm) and remove it with tweezers. This helps drive the temperature down quicker towards the glass-transition point so no more plastic will drool out, and thus leaves fresh plastic and a clean tip. Do just one extrusion and/or don't do it if the tip temp is less than 180.
3) At this point, I hit disconnect and unplug the printer if I won't be printing more, or leave it on if I will be- shouldn't matter a lot since all the major components are disengaged.
Using Pronterface and Skeinforge, I didn't really have first-layer sticking or other build quality problems. I think the raft made it work nicely every time, but then again you have the raft to peel off and it leaves quite obvious strips..
When I went to Repetier and Slic3r, I had first-layer sticking problems. At first, I blamed this on Slic3r's lack of raft, but avoiding a raft is a desireable thing and therefore the following helped TREMENDOUSLY for me:
1) Gently wipe down the bed surface with a paper towel and acetone- especially if you have touched it with fingers or if it hasn't been cleaned since the factory. With power off, naturally
2) Use the 1a) trick from above to disable the 'wait for extruder temp' command. Prior to this I was a) wondering what the hell it was waiting for when I clicked Run, and b) the drooling plastic ended up sticking to the tip and would brush against and dislodge my first layer... ruining the whole print.
3) Enable Skirt. For some reason, it wouldn't let me set 1 loop, so I'm using 2 loops. This further helps ensure there is a clean tip with fresh plastic when it starts to lay down the first strand of your actual print.
4) Configure Slic3r to slow down the first layer, and extrude more plastic for the first layer. Lately I've been using 20mm/s first layer speed, and .55mm first layer extrusion width.
I'm pretty sure #4 was the clincher, for me. I went from not being able to print a damn thing from Slic3r, to needing to firmly crack the part off the bed (perhaps even too firmly).
