I've resigned myself to the fact that the OEM dialer will always be there. Oh well I guess I'll get use to it... and I do like some features of it... the design is nice and clean.
I decided to go with DW Contacts though, mainly because of how conveniently it manages contact groups and if you have a large group it allows you to instantly drop to any location; that is, if you press the "a-z" button you can select a letter, W for example, and instantly go to all W contacts without having to scroll a hundred times.