Yeah, it will need to be rooted.
I did mine just the other day, and i too initially found it pretty hard going, lots of conflicting information spread about all over the place.
Then i found
this post. Rooting and installing modaco rom (recommended, its faster than the stock 2.73 build and has market enabler built in, see
this thread) took less than 30 mins after that, and that includes downloading the files.