For me, I would prefer a 180mm Macro, but they were prohibitively expensive for what I had to spend :( The 105 is great, and allows me a little flexibility on how close to something I have to be. A 60mm would've probably not worked that well for me, but having never used one, that is just speculation.
I shoot in Raw, which is much better for what I do. RAW will capture "exactly" what has come through the lense, and you can adjust whitebalance etc afterwards and use your own eye to get the shot truly representative of what you saw. The down side is that you can't just download from the camera and start viewing, post processing can be a bit of a chore. Again, I think it depends on what you are doing. For most shots, the cameras own image processing is pretty good and will satisfy the vast majority. In odd lighting, things can get confused and end up with hues to the picture that look odd or unatural. Sometimes these can be overcome by using the presets of whitebalance for differing lighting, or setting it yourself, but you then need to start thinking about the surroundings when you take the shot, rather than compensating afterwards. Horses for courses, just try it out and see what works best for you. Not sure on the Nikon, but on mine I can have RAW + Jpeg. Means you get less shots on the memory card but gives you the option of using jpegs most of the time, and having the RAW image available if the odd picture needs correcting.
I didn't know about the Minolta thing, so that's why Sony has suddenly become a force in SLR cameras - it made no sense as they seemingly came from nowhere!
Yup, they popped up from nowhere. On the plus side, they have added to the range. Unfortunately, I had hoped it would kick start a drop in prices for the accessories but it never happened. for instance, the Sony flashes are just as expensive as the old Minolta badged versions.